


there will be time

by crassulaovata (fandomsandcake)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Character Study, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, M/M, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Slow Build, Slow Burn, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-26
Updated: 2018-02-05
Packaged: 2019-03-09 14:57:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 39,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13483890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fandomsandcake/pseuds/crassulaovata
Summary: Finn brought himself to life, and then he fell in love.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A few things:
> 
> \- **Broad content warnings for violence, gore and PTSD**
> 
> \- Contains major spoilers for TLJ
> 
> \- Title from the song of the same name by Mumford & Sons and Baaba Maal
> 
> \- Huge thanks to Cat and Victoria for helping me edit, and continuing to help despite the fact that you signed up to read a 10k finnpoe fic which then proceeded to absorb my life and quadruple in length. 
> 
> \- Any remaining mistakes are completely my own, and are probably a result of me blatantly ignoring some very good advice. This applies especially to the linguistic intricacies of the Star Wars universe. Do Star Wars characters say _bullshit_? Because they do now.
> 
> \- Come visit me on tumblr at [poe-dmrn.tumblr.com](poe-dmrn.tumblr.com)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _When he thinks of loving Poe, he thinks of the smell of leather and fire and fuel._

(i)

 

(The universe is full of moments, beautiful and terrible, and each one, without exclusion, is monumental. The sun rises, and the moon sets, and the stars burn, and time keeps rushing forward at it’s fervent pace. The universe doesn’t allow life, or death, or love to exist in isolation. Each second of war, each stab of pain, and each violent whisper of doubt are breathtaking in their enormity. All things are monumental. The sun rises, and the moon sets, and the stars burn, and time keeps rushing forward at it’s fervent pace.)

 

***

 

The days after Crait are heavy. The Millennium Falcon is crowded, but simultaneously too empty, with every unoccupied space a glaring reminder of the Resistance’s dwindling numbers. The air is thick with both relief that they made it and grief that the cost was so high. It’s so overwhelming that the emotions boil over, and then simmer down to a vague, depersonalised guilt, with each person wishing they could have done more, wishing things had gone better, wishing they knew where to go from here.

Finn feels lost. All he really wants to do is sleep, but the ache in his bones is matched by a buzz in his blood that keeps his mind racing the moment he tries to rest. Instead, he spends hours in restless silence next to Rose’s medbay cot, the drone of voices and droids in the background oddly muted and every scrape of metal or rustle of fabric a thousand times too loud. He feels adrift, like a bit of debris shot loose during battle and left floating through space, freezing, floating, shattering, dissolving.

Poe meets his eyes from the corridor, but then is being pulled away by General Organa before Finn can say anything. (He doesn’t know what he’d say anyway, really. _Sorry for almost dying. I’m glad you’re alive. How do I keep believing that the Resistance can win when this is all that’s left?_ )

It’s hours until he’s finally alone with Rey, and the first moments are spent in silence.

“How are you?” he says, finally, and it feels even weaker than it sounds.

Rey sighs, and her voice is a whisper when she replies: “We have so much to do. We’ve lost so many people – Luke is gone – and…” she trails off and meets Finn’s eyes.

He knows what she means.

“It’s hard to hold onto hope sometimes,” he finishes for her, and she nods.

“It just feels like everything is so…  _ big _ ,” she says.  Her hands are balled into tight fists around the fabric of her shirt. “Sometimes, I just wish for something meaningless to occupy myself with. Something other than life and death and the fate of the universe.”

“It’s a little late for that.” Finn is glad when Rey smiles, even if it doesn’t reach her eyes. 

“Have you had anything meaningless happen to you?” she asks, a note of wistfulness and desperation in her voice. “Anything at all. Since this all began.” Finn knows full well that Rey knows that nothing is meaningless. Everything is imbued with meaning, so much that it hurts sometimes, trying to connect the dots between the seemingly mundane and the indisputably massive. It hurts sometimes, trying to know what’s important, when everything is important, when no choice or deed or interaction is without monumental consequences.

“What counts as meaningless?”

Rey shrugs, and tells him a story about being woken up by porgs while on the island with Luke. It’s light, and makes Finn laugh (and the laugh almost feels genuine. Not quite. But almost), but they both know that the underlying current is still  _ Luke _ , is still  _ Jedi, _ is still  _ war. _

He knows that she wants to hear something in return (needs to hear something, maybe) and if he’s being honest with himself, he also needs to talk about something other than massive, shattering, life-changing moments. But there are none of those, as hard as he thinks, which is why he says, instead: “Rose kissed me, after she saved me.”

A grin spreads across Rey’s face, and while her eyes are still a bit sad, and a lot tired, the expression makes Finn smile too. “Do you like her?”

The question, while not contextually unusual, surprises Finn. His smile falters. “I – I don’t know. I don’t think so. I think…” He hesitates. “Before she kissed me, right, she said this thing about fighting for what we love and… when she said that, I didn’t think of  _ her _ right away, even though she was right there, and even though she just saved me. Does that make me a terrible person? I don’t know.”

He wonders a lot about what does and doesn’t make him a terrible person. He wonders a lot about what does and doesn’t make him a  _ person, _ to begin with, rather than a machine, a designation number, a uniform. And he is a person -- that much he knows. It was that bit of knowledge that was the first crack in his conditioning. The second he realised that he was  _ someone _ , rather than just  _ something _ , that he was more than an accessory to those around him, was the second that the choice was made. (Because really, gifted with that knowledge, that first spark of individuality, there was no turning back.) 

But that doesn’t make it easier, in the here and now, to objectively judge the right-and-wrong of his actions and thoughts, when his identity still feels so contingent on how he relates to others, and how they perceive him, Finn, the individual. He’s a person, but he isn’t sure he knows what that means yet, not fully. He can’t help but feel a thorn of self-loathing prickling deep in his stomach every time he thinks too hard about himself, wondering what’s normal and what’s a residue of First Order programming. 

“I don’t think so,” Rey says, after appearing to give it a moment of genuine thought. One of the things Finn loves so much about her is that she doesn’t just say  _ no, of course not, you could never be a terrible person _ .

“I do love her,” he clarifies, feeling increasingly flustered. “But I don’t want to kiss her, I don’t think. And I haven’t known her long enough to love her as much as other people, like you, and Poe. As a friend, obviously. I don’t want to kiss you any more than I want to kiss Rose.”

And  _ kissing _ . That’s a whole other level of being a person that’s Finn’s consciously decided he’s not ready to think too hard about. 

“Do you want to kiss Poe?” Rey asks, tilting her head and giving Finn an interrogative look that makes his cheeks burn. He glares back, begrudged by the fact that that was her primary take-away. She didn’t focus on the fact that he loves  _ her  _ in a not-kissing kind of way, but grants that it’s probably because it goes without saying. The mood feels lighter, now, and Finn thinks it might partially be the way that Rey has uncurled her body, looser, and leaning forwards with her hands resting on her knees, and it might be in part that the heat rising to Finn’s face is a welcome distraction from the ever-present dread and guilt.

“Woah, no,” he says, and knows he sounds defensive. “Poe is…” he stops, and then says the first thing that comes to mind, which is: “handsome!” and then realises that he’s just making things worse. “And… a pilot?” He winces at the way it comes out as a question.

Rey is grinning now, and her eyes look a little bit less sad. “You do want to kiss him!”

Finn gapes at her for a moment, opening and closing his mouth, and he knows looks disgustingly undignified. Rey laughs, and then it falls quiet and the moment passes.

The rooms gets heavy again, and the topic of Poe suddenly feels overwhelming. “I don’t know,” he says quietly. “I don’t love Poe in the same way that I love you, but I don’t know which way I do love him. I don’t really have a lot of experience with loving people.” As soon as he says it he regrets it, because he knows how sad it sounds.

But instead of giving him a look of pity, Rey just nods, and he remembers that she doesn’t have a lot of experience either.

Long into that night he thinks about love. He thinks about how he used to love nothing, but now loves so many things with so much intensity that he feels like his heart might explode. He loves the Resistance and he loves General Organa, but the love he feels for them is hot and angry, and mixed with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach when he thinks about what it is they’re fighting against (when he thinks about how, if only one moment had gone differently, they would be fighting against him). He loves Rose, but the way he loves her feels too much like the way he loves the Resistance. It’s fast and bloody, and he thinks that when this is over he’d like to learn to love Rose in a way that doesn’t make him think of imminent death, and the smell of burning flesh, and of learning that behind beautiful things the universe breeds corruption and pain.

And then there’s Rey. And Poe. He feels like he should love them in the same way he loves Rose, because their times together have been no less intense, no less bloody, no less urgent, no less fraught with hard lessons and devastating truths, but it’s different. With Rey he feels a strong pull to  _ protect _ , even though he knows Rey doesn’t need protecting. He wants to know everything about her, for always. He wants to be her friend for the rest of their lives, as long or short as that may be, and wonders whether that means he should want to kiss her. He knows that platonic love and romantic love are different, even though he hasn’t ever really felt either, but can’t connect  _ Rey  _ and  _ romantic love  _ as hard as he tries. He thinks about holding her hand, and it makes him feel warm, safe, content, but it stops there. She’s his best friend, and he loves her. He loves Rey so much that the thought of losing her even temporarily is agonising. He doesn’t know what the  _ other _ kind of love feels like, having only heard it in brief snatches of melody, hummed illicitly by a Stormtrooper in the bunks, and overheard it referred to in fragments of conversation, in stories of the great, mythological romances of Han and Leia, or Padme and Anakin. He doesn’t know what it feels like, but he knows it doesn’t feel like Rey.

When Finn tries to define the way he loves Poe, it’s more difficult. Finn loves him, but the way he loves him feels so tangled that it makes it hard to breathe. The way he loves Poe feels intense, but without the anger and fear of the way he loves the Resistance. It’s also laced with a desire to protect and connect, but even this feels different than the way he loves Rey. When he thinks of loving Poe, he thinks of the smell of leather and fire and fuel. He thinks of Poe’s hands on his shoulders, his neck, his face; of the sun in his eyes when he saw that Poe was alive; of the cold hangar concrete beneath his feet when he stumbled out of the medbay. He thinks that maybe this is how people normally feel about their friends (people who aren’t their  _ best friends _ ) but knows that that doesn’t feel right, even if he can’t pinpoint why. He wonders whether it might be the  _ other  _ kind of love, but that thought terrifies him enough that he decides not to think about it.

He drifts into a restless sleep and dreams of losing the things he loves. He wakes up in a cold sweat and has to remind himself who he is (even if he isn’t really sure, yet).  

_ His name is Finn, he’s with the Resistance, there are people in this galaxy who he loves. _

 

***

 

He’s thankful when they touch ground on Chyria, a Type 1 planet in an Outer Rim system. He gasps down the crisp air the moment the bay doors open, and instantly feels foolish. Even the Millennium Falcon, with its rusted, narrow spaces, afforded him more freedom that he was ever really acclimatised to, having spent the majority of his life cramped, contained, caged on First Order ships. Twenty-four hours trapped inside a small freighter shouldn’t make his chest feel this tight.

They take refuge in an abandoned village, carved into the side of a cliff. The skeletal remains of a carrier ship at the base of the mountain suggests  _ why  _ it’s abandoned, but Finn knows if he thinks too hard about it he’ll want to cry. General Organa mentions a battle that had happened here, long ago, during the Galactic Civil War, and Finn can easily see the tactical advantage of the thick forestry and mountainous terrain. It’s makes sense that a base was built here, as small and as run-down as it is. Dense forestry spreads out below them, tapering gradually into a beach and a vast lake that swallows the horizon. It’s reminds Finn of D’Qar, but here the air feels colder, crisper, and the lake is a startling colour of deep purple. Strange creatures make vague, warbling noises in the forest below, and while Finn knows it’s the simple sounds of life, it makes him feel on edge.

The accommodations are limited enough that they need to share. Each dwelling is a cave carved into the cliff-face, with a thick, movable screen of ivy shielding them from the outdoors. The rock is embedded with hunks of glowing gold-and-silver minerals, which give the interior a softly-lit, glittering quality even when no lamps are on. Finn could almost convince himself that this were a naturally-occurring cave, if it weren’t for raised stone platforms for sleeping, the perfectly circular pool of water in the centre, and the dusty, crumbling rows of pots and pans stacked against the back wall.

Finn had assumed he’d be sharing with Rey, but she tells him with a look of genuine, deep concern that she needs a cave to herself, to train. She promises that she’ll see Finn more than she would have if they were living together (which he doubts) but needs to be able to meditate, and practice utilising the Force in solitude. Finn is far less shaken than Rey seems to think he’d be.

Finn doesn’t even realise that he’s injured until he slips walking down the mountain, and lifts his pant leg to see a large, bloodied gash, mostly dried. He vaguely remembers being struck in the leg while fighting Phasma, but the adrenaline had made it seem insignificant. His back hits the rock when he falls, and it sends a sharp wave of pain up his spine. The leg’s not even bleeding anymore, he tells General Organa (and pointedly  _ doesn’t  _ mention his back) but she gives him a stern look and sends him to see a medic, who cleans the wound and tells him to sit down for the rest of the day.

He sits on a log by the Millennium Falcon, watching as everyone else unloads and takes inventory of what little cargo they have, and scrounge together food and supplies from the forest and long-abandoned corners of the base around them. He tries to get up and help, hoping no one will notice, but invisible hands press him back down, and he looks up to see Rey watching him, one hand outstretched, and an angry look on her face.

“That’s not how you’re meant to use the Force,” Finn says, quietly admitting to himself that he really doesn’t have any idea how you  _ are  _ meant to use the Force.

“Yes it is,” Rey replies, dropping her hand.

Finn feels the weight holding him down leave, but doesn’t try to get up again. “I want to do something,” he mutters as Rey slides down next to him.

“I know.” She exhales sharply, a mixture of understanding, frustration and anger. “But you  _ do _ need to rest.”

“So does everyone!” the increase in volume startles a nearby porg, which takes off with a shrill screech. “I need to help.” He’d meant to say he  _ wants  _ to help, with  _ need  _ feeling far too strong (and yet also more accurate).

“I’ll find something,” she promises, and after a few minutes is returning with a large bundle of vines, cut crudely from the forest, in her arms. “These need to be woven into sleeping mats?” she sounds and looks apologetic, and Finn groans and buries his face in his hands.

“I’m completely capable of doing… things,” he says, looking back up at her. “Just because I’m injured doesn’t mean I’m useless. I can help  _ lift  _ things and … climb stuff?” He gestures vaguely toward the mountain, which doesn’t  _ need  _ to be climbed, with well-worn paths winding their way up to the top, but the point is that he  _ could  _ climb it if they needed him to.

“You’ll hurt yourself more,” Rey crosses her arms and glares at him, the sympathy gone from her expression.

Finn shrinks and sighs. “This is definitely an important job?” he asks, pointing to the vines.

“Oh, the most important,” Rey lies.

Finn sighs, and when Rey gets up to go do  _ actually important  _ work, he spends the next hour trying to work out how to weave vines into sleeping mats. He thinks he works it out eventually, and makes a note to give the first mat, which is barely five feet by two, to Rose, and then thinking about Rose makes his heart hurt.

The slight breeze makes him shiver, and he wishes that he still had Poe’s jacket –  _ his  _ jacket – and thinks of it lying somewhere in the debris of a First Order ship, or floating in space surrounded by the lifeless bodies of Stormtroopers. He’s so focused on the vines and the chill and the empty space left by losing so many people and things, and how stupid it is that he feels so empty about losing  _ things _ , that he doesn’t notice Poe walking up to him until he’s sat down and put his hand on Finn’s back.

“Hey, buddy,” he says, and his smile is so genuine that it makes Finn’s smile feel real too.

“Poe.” He means to follow it up with something like  _ I’m glad to see you _ or  _ hi _ , but it remains a single, punctuating syllable.

“Did you hear we’re gonna be roommates?” Poe asks. Finn _had_ heard, because he’d been the one to specifically ask that they be roommates (argue that they be roommates, even, presenting the Private in charge of designations with a substantial verbal list of all the pros, that she repeatedly assured him she didn’t need).

Suddenly unsure whether his request was appropriate, he settles on a high-pitched, “Yep,” and then curses himself for his monosyllabic responses.

“I’m glad,” Poe continues, and Finn lets out a breath he didn’t realise he’d been holding. “I’ve missed you.”

“I missed you too,” Finn says, and it’s true. His fingers absently twirl around the vine in his hand. He shivers again, and then feels incredibly guilty. “I lost your jacket. My jacket. The jacket you gave me. I’m sorry.”

Poe laughs, and it’s a little bit sad, but it still makes Finn feel warm. “It’s fine,” Poe tells him. “It’s just a jacket, even if it did look really good on you.” His words are accompanied by a smirk that sends heat to Finn’s cheeks.

Poe pauses and clenches his jaw, and Finn feels his hand press harder against his back. It feels serious, now, and Finn quietly resents that every good moment has to turn so real, so quickly, forcing him to consider the meaning when he wishes moments could just  _ be _ . “I’d rather have you here and in one piece than the dumb jacket, yeah?” Poe meets his eyes again, and Finn nods. “I’m sorry if I didn’t – if I don’t show you well enough, but I really care about you, Finn.” He pauses. “The Resistance cares about you,” he adds quickly, almost like an afterthought.

Finn blinks, and he doesn’t really understand why Poe is telling him this. “Of course you show me well enough. I know.” He has never doubted that Poe cares about him, not since he saw him alive on D’Qar for the first time, after thinking him swallowed by sand on Jakku. Poe had been so genuinely happy to see him, despite the fact that they’d interacted for barely a handful of minutes. Poe had called him by his  _ name _ (the name that Poe offered him). He has a lot of doubts – about himself, about the war, about his place in any of it – but he has never doubted that Poe cares. 

“I should have done more to stop you trying to be a martyr,” Poe pushes, sounding angry now, and Finn thinks,  _ oh, that’s why _ . “I don’t want you to doubt your importance, Finn. You’re not expendable, and I need to make you see that. I should have been the one to save you, I – I know I  _ couldn’t  _ because I needed to be in command, but… I should have done it anyway.”

“Don’t be dumb,” Finn says, and he didn’t realise Poe’s hand had been trailing gently up and down his back until it stops, coming to rest in the middle of his spine.

“I know it’s dumb, but it’s also just…  _ a lot _ , you know?” Poe says, and it’s partially nonsense, but the truth is that Finn  _ does  _ know.

“And I wasn’t trying to be a martyr,” Finn defends.

“You don’t need to die to be a hero.”

_ I’m not a hero _ , is what Finn doesn’t say. “You don’t need to die, either,” is what he does.

“I’m not trying to die.”

“Then be more careful.”

Poe doesn’t reply right away, and the air is even thicker than before. Finn shivers. “You’re cold,” Poe says, instead of making the promise Finn wants him to make; the promise that he’ll be more careful, and won’t ever die. But he knows no one can make that promise in war.

Finn shrugs, and his body betrays him with another shiver.

“Here,” Poe shuffles and stands up, so he’s behind Finn. He slides off his jacket, and Finn is only half aware of what’s happening until Poe insistently taps on his shoulders and tells him to lift his arms. Poe helps him slide on the jacket, and Finn grudgingly thinks that he doesn’t  _ need  _ help, but doesn’t make any move to stop it. “Better,” Poe says, and it’s not a question.

“This is becoming a pattern,” Finn says, twisting his head backwards so he can look at Poe, who’s grinning at him, a look in his eyes that Finn can’t name, something warm and genuine. The lining of the jacket is soft, and the feel of the leather when he presses his hand to his chest is inexplicably calming. He absently wonders how many leather jackets Poe owns, and how many of them will end up in Finn’s possession at one point or another. 

“What can I say, I like seeing you in my clothes.”

“It’s not a bad pattern,” Finn admits. “We have to share, though. Tell me if you get cold.”

“I’m fine. I’m hotter than most,” Poe grins, and it isn’t until a couple of hours later that Finn picks up on the innuendo, and then spends far too long wondering whether Poe meant it as innuendo, or whether Finn is just reading too much into things, and whether he  _ wants  _ it to be innuendo.

BB-8 rolls up and beeps something at him, rocking vigorously back and forth in the direction of the jacket.

“I didn’t steal it,” Finn says defensively. “We’re sharing.”

Although Finn doesn’t speak binary, he picks up a tone of incredulity from the ensuing string of beeps.

“Shut up.”

 

***

 

They talk every night before falling asleep, and it’s somehow easier to say things when it’s to a disembodied voice in the darkness, and he can’t see the look on Poe’s face, or feel his hands on his chest.

“I never knew my parents,” Finn says. “Rey didn’t either, so I know she understands. I don’t know where I came from, but I was stolen, probably.”

“You could be from anywhere?” Poe replies.

“Yeah. I could be a secret space prince for all we know.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. If anyone were going to be a secret space prince, it’d be you buddy.” 

There’s a moment of silence. “I’m probably not, though. I’m probably no-one. Or I was created. Grown in a tube. I don’t know.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Poe says, and the sudden intensity in his voice startles Finn. “What matters is where you are now. I’d feel the same way about you if you were a secret space prince, or grown in some First Order lab. It doesn’t matter.”

Finn doesn’t ask how Poe feels about him, because that question feels  _ big _ , for reasons he can’t identify. Instead he asks, “Tell me about where you came from.”

“Yavin IV,” he says. “My parents were in the Rebel Alliance. My mother was a pilot, and she taught me to fly. Her name was Shara, and I think you’d like her, Finn. She was brave, and didn’t take any shit. She met my dad when they were still at war, and it must have been hard, I think, but damn, they loved each other. And they were so…  _ brave _ , and  _ good _ , y’know. If I can be half of what they were, I’ll be happy.”

“What happened to them?” Finn asks, already knowing the answer.

“They died. My mother when I was only eight. And my father about ten years ago, now” Finn hears Poe’s breath catch. “I was never alone, though. I was lucky. There were always people who loved me.”

“Is that why you became a pilot?”

“Yeah. I wanted to – I still want to – make them proud, you know?”

Finn doesn’t really know. There was never anyone who he wanted to make proud. He wonders if other Stormtroopers, those who were loyal, wanted to make the First Order  _ proud _ . He wonders if love was ever a motivation for any of them. He can’t imagine anyone ever loving the First Order the way Poe talks about loving his parents, and the way Finn is starting to love the Resistance, but maybe that’s a flaw in his programming.

“I guess,” he says. “What was Yavin IV like?” He’s seen holos of it before, of course, but has never been, and he knows that no holo could compare to the vivid, bright, emotive nature of Poe’s memories.

“Hot,” Poe begins, with a note of wistfulness in his voice. “It’s covered in rainforests, as far as the eye can see. When I was little, me and the other kids would climb into the trees and pretend we were rebel fighters, shooting down Stormtroopers.” He stops, and Finn knows he must have realised what he said. He wishes it didn’t hurt so badly, but it does.

“I’m sorry,” Poe says.

“No – no, keep telling me. It’s alright.”

He takes a deep breath, which Finn swears he can feel from across the room. “When it rained, the whole planet would feel twice as heavy. The air would be so thick it was hard to breathe, and your clothes would stick to you. Sometimes we weren’t able to fly because the metal in our piece-of-shit ships would expand in the heat, and so everything would be put on hold until it cooled down. On those days it felt like living in a giant bowl of soup.”

He pauses. “But everything was so beautiful,” he continues. “Everything smelt so alive. I’ve never been anywhere that smells the same as Yavin IV. We had these flowers – orchids, I think – that would glow. A field of them at night is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. It’s just stars, and flowers, and it feels like you’re floating somewhere between the two.” Time feels like it’s moving too slowly, and it seems like a lifetime before Poe says, “I’ll take you there, after we win.”

It’s such a big promise that Finn thinks his heart stops beating. It’s assuming that they’ll win, that the war will end, that they’ll both survive, that there’ll still be a planet to go to.

“I’d love that,” Finn says. The silence feels pulled too tight as they drift to sleep.

 

***

 

Rose wakes up four days after they settle on Chyria. When Lieutenant Connix comes running over to Finn to let him know, his heart feels like it will beat out of his chest.

He runs to the makeshift medbay in one of the front-most rooms of the base, to find Rose sitting up, looking tired and pale and even smaller than usual. “Rose!” he shouts, and embraces her, before quickly realising that she’s probably hurt and letting go. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m good,” she says, and her voice sounds raspier than Finn remembers. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

“I’m more than okay. I’m great. I’m so good, never been better,” Finn knows he’s rambling, but as always, has trouble making himself stop. “You saved me,” he finishes.

“Because you were an absolute idiot!” Rose retorts, clearly upset. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, and Rose sighs. He sits down on the bed next to her, and adjusts himself until he’s comfortable.

“What happened?” she asks.

Finn swallows. The lump in his throat doesn’t leave, but he starts talking anyway, telling her about Luke and Kylo’s fight, and Rey arriving to help them escape. When he’s finished, the quiet in the room feels suffocating.

“I thought I was going to die,” she says after a moment. “That why – just so you know – that why I –”

“Oh. Oh!” Finn suddenly feels very flustered. “Yeah the – that thing that happened. Yep, no, perfect excuse. Not that you need an excuse. It was nice, I just… not that you’re not perfectly kissable!

“Finn,” she says sternly, cutting him off, and his face feels hot and he kinda wants to  _ leave _ .

“Sorry,” he says again, not really sure what he’s apologising for this time. “I do love you, just … not in that way.”

“I love you not-in-that-way too,” she says, grabbing his hand, and they hold hands and talk for awhile, and Finn feels his heartbeat return to normal, and the chaos in his brain calms down, just a bit.

***

“Have you ever had a girlfriend?” Finn asks Poe one night, and then feels stupid the moment the words leave his mouth. They’re sitting in the middle of their cave, the pool of water casting a soft blue glow across the room.

Poe gives him a look that he can’t decipher. “No I haven’t.” Finn doesn’t understand why he sounds so careful, why he’s studying Finn’s reaction so carefully. “Have you?” he asks after a moment, and Finn thinks he must know the answer is no.

“No,” he says anyway. “I didn’t – that sort of stuff wasn’t permitted.” He doesn’t say  _ wasn’t permitted for Stormtroopers _ , because he knows that Poe understands, and the word  _ Stormtrooper  _ makes his throat fill with bile every time he has to utter it.

“What about Rey?”

Finn blinks. It seems like an abrupt change of topic. “I don’t think Rey has ever had a girlfriend either.”

Poe laughs. “No, like…” he looks away and licks his lips. “What about Rey? Is she your girlfriend?”

He flinches involuntarily. “No!” Finn feels himself blushing. “No. Rey is my best friend. I love her but … it isn’t like that. I don’t want to kiss her.”

“What about Rose?”

“No!” He thinks about whether to tell Poe about the kiss, and then realises that there’s no reason he shouldn’t, and doesn’t know why he even gave it a second thought. “She kissed me on Crait but … we talked about it. Neither of us feel that way about each other.”

Poe nods and is silent.

“Why haven’t you had a girlfriend?” Finn blurts, and wishes he was better at filtering what he says, but he isn’t. He’s never been very good at it, and at night, alone with Poe, he’s even worse. He’s never been very good at it, not since the first moment he was allowed to speak with freedom. He spent most of his existence monitoring what he said with utmost care, and more often than not electing to say nothing. Sometimes, it feels like there’s so many thoughts that are making themselves known with such intensity and urgency that the moment it takes to choose which ones come out of his mouth is a moment he can’t afford.

Poe taps his fingers against the stone of the floor and meets Finn’s eyes, and Finn doesn’t know why he looks so nervous. “I don’t like girls like that.”

Finn opens his mouth and then closes it again. “Oh,” he says after a beat. Finn can see the tension in Poe’s muscles, and he understands now why Poe’s answers had been so careful. “You’re gay.”

“Yeah,” Poe meets his eyes, and there’s a fire there –  _ I dare you to say something bad –  _ but also a look of pleading –  _ but please don’t _ .

“Have you ever had a boyfriend?” Finn asks instead, and feels warm when Poe’s body relaxes and he smiles in relief.

“One proper boyfriend,” he says. “Couple of years ago, back when I was in the Republic Starfleet. It didn’t work out.”

“Why?”

“He… didn’t care about the how serious the threat of the First Order was. He was loyal to the Republic through-and-through, and I think we both know how few shits they give. And I cared too much, I guess.” He laughs, but it’s dry. “I can be pretty damn stubborn.”

Finn nods, but he isn’t sure what exactly he’s agreeing with. “Was he cute? Was your boyfriend cute?” and he really doesn’t know why he cares.

Poe gives him another  _ look _ and then smirks. “Not compared to you. He was a solid seven but… you’re a ten, Finn.”

Finn doesn’t know what it means to be a  _ seven  _ or a  _ ten _ , but the first part of the sentence is enough to make him blush.

“You deserve a cute boyfriend,” he says.

“You deserve a cute girlfriend,” Poe replies.

“Or boyfriend.” Finn doesn’t meet Poe’s eyes. “A cute girlfriend or boyfriend, I think. I don’t think I want either right now but… when I do. I think either would be okay.”

Finn makes a mental note to get better at reading Poe’s  _ looks  _ (he puts it up there with learning to speak droid), because the one he’s giving him now feels intense and curious and like it should maybe make him uncomfortable, but it doesn’t.

 

***

 

In between strategy meetings and weapons training, Finn starts to knit. He finds a pair of needles tucked away in a box in the back of their cave, and isn’t really sure what they are until Rose explains. She shows him how to cast on, knit, purl, cast off, and suddenly his quiet moments are filled with a soft  _ clack, clack, clack _ . The repetition relaxes him, makes it easier to separate himself from the ever-present chaos that he’s learnt comes with freedom, and the process of  _ making something  _ feels good. He uses the half-dozen balls of wool he found with the needles to make a blanket for the medbay, and it’s ugly and mismatched, but he’s proud.

When the wool runs out, he starts experimenting with thin vines and reeds and grass that he finds around, and it’s mostly a failure, and then he finds this one plant that’s perfect, pale orange and the texture of soft cotton. Having a use to the Resistance outside of being a highly-trained soldier, a window into the intricacies of the First Order, feels good. He can create, not just destroy. Finding something mundane that he enjoys feels like a piece of his identity slipping into place.

_ His name is Finn, he’s with the Resistance, there are people in the galaxy who he loves, his best friend is Rey, he’d be happy with a cute girlfriend or a cute boyfriend, and he likes to knit. _

 

***

 

Finn has always had nightmares. For as long as he can remember his nights have been punctuated by sharp awakenings, lingering images of blood and death and the omnipresent sensation of fear. He learnt very quickly not to make any noise when waking up. He remembers being very young and being reprimanded in front of his peers for his nightmares, for his fear and his weakness, knees quaking inside the plasteel armour. Stormtroopers don’t have nightmares. Stormtroopers don’t scream. Stormtroopers don’t cry.

He’s always had nightmares, and he doesn’t think they’re any worse now than they were before. They still occur with the same frequency, and he still feels that same, familiar terror. Except now, when he wakes up, it’s accompanied by an agonising burn in his back, which feels like Ren’s lightsaber is rending his flesh apart all over again. While the frequency of his nightmares remain unchanged, the content is different. Where the dead used to be mostly faceless – a mixture of Stormtroopers, civilians, family members he never knew – they now take on more distinct forms. Every night he watches Rey and Poe die, and it never stops feeling real.

One night he lets himself cry upon waking, and then feels so overcome with guilt, with shame at his own weakness, that he doesn’t fall back to sleep. He avoids Poe for the rest of the day, the images of his bloodied face, his dead eyes, his body lying limp in the ruins of an X-Wing somehow more real than usual.

That night, he dreams again. This time, Finn watches Poe disintegrate into sand, and blow away before he can do anything about it. He doesn’t cry when he wakes up, and lets the soft sounds of Poe’s breath across the cave lull him back into a restless sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Finn wants to ask Poe if he feels it too, the static buzz, like this moment is alive._

(ii)

 

_ We must have allies out there somewhere _ , is the backbone of all strategy discussions since landing on Chyria. Finn wishes he had as much hope as General Organa and Poe, and all the  _ real _ Resistance fighters. The ones who didn’t stumble here mostly by accident. He’s trying to maintain hope – he really is – but he can’t help feeling that if they  _ did _ have any allies left, they would have come by now. He’d stood in that base on Crait, and given a speech about how their allies would come, and he’d believed it, and he’d been wrong. He knows the strength of the First Order better than anyone, and just can’t see how, given everything, there could be anyone left. He has trouble understanding, sometimes, how  _ their _ group is left.

One day, when he’s feeling particularly tired, particularly hopeless, particularly like he doesn’t belong, he voices these concerns. “Do you really think we’d still be here if the First Order didn’t want us here? If it wasn’t part of their plan?”

He knows he must appear frantic, bordering on unhinged, but the look Rey gives him still hurts. Finn thinks it says  _ don’t let them win Finn _ , and  _ you know better than that _ . 

“The First Order are  _ not  _ that strong,” she says, and the resolve in her voice makes him want to scream.

“You don’t  _ know _ ,” he thinks he might be yelling, but can’t be quite sure. He feels pathetic. Of course Rey  _ does  _ know. She’s the most powerful person he’s ever met. She’s also one of the most genuinely  _ good _ . She spoke to Kylo Ren through the Force for weeks, and she still tried to save him, even knowing all the evil he’d done. Her knowledge of the First Order is intimate in ways that Finn’s will never be. Still, there’s something inside him that’s telling him to ignore his better judgement, because he’s the only  _ Stormtrooper _ here. He’s the only one who’s held a standard-issue First Order blaster and been told to murder for the cause. “There’s no-one left out there,” he says. “We’re all that’s left. We need to protect  _ us _ .”

“We can’t run,” Poe hisses. The disappointment in his voice makes Finn angrier, for reasons he doesn’t really understand, or is maybe just too tired to decipher.  

“We need to  _ survive _ ,” he shouts.

“We survive by fighting,” General Organa says, and something about the power in her voice makes Finn deflate slightly. “And we fight by making sure our allies know that we’re still here. The First Order are strong, you’re right Finn. We need to make sure we don’t underestimate their resources and power. But,” she pauses, and meets his eyes, “we need to keep fighting. The moment we give up is the moment they win. If I’ve learnt anything, in my whole life, it’s that there’s always people out there who want to resist, who just need that spark of hope to join the fight. We find them,” she says, “and we win.”

Rey doesn’t talk to him for a day after that, and every time he meets Poe’s eyes he can see him begging Finn not to give up hope, and it’s infuriating. Rose is the one who listens while he rants in circles about the strength of the First Order, about how maybe he’s defective because he can’t seem to believe in the Resistance as much as everyone else. He’s grateful when she doesn’t respond with a moving speech about the importance of hope and never giving up, and instead just holds his hand and reminds him, quietly, that the First Order won’t ever get him back.

 

***

 

After his outburst at the strategy table, Finn is surprised when a few days later General Organa asks him to be part of the group being sent out to find allies. This isn’t a mission that requires any particular knowledge of the First Order, and he doesn’t understand why she’d pick him, instead of someone like Rose.

“It’ll be good for you,” is all she says when he asks, and the intensity in her gaze gives her words a crushing depth and a sense of finality.

Their first priority is sourcing more ships. General Organa asserts that it’s too dangerous for a crew to leave on any sort of extended mission otherwise. The people left behind on Chyria need to be ready to evacuate at any moment. Soon, Poe and the other remaining pilots are leaving in the Millennium Falcon, and returning a day later with four more mismatched ships that have definitely seen better days.

It’s decided they’ll depart the next morning. Their crew is Finn, Lieutenant Connix, and Poe. And BB-8, who’s such a natural extension of Poe that Finn sometimes forgets to count it as a separate member of their party. He still doesn’t understand why General Organa chose  _ him _ . Poe and Connix make  _ sense _ . He’s never  _ really _ spoken to Connix, not properly, but he knows that’s she’s smart, and a skilled fighter and diplomat. Poe is  _ Poe _ so of course he was chosen. He wishes Rey and Rose were coming, instead of Connix. It’s not that he dislikes her, but Finn can’t help thinking that she looks out of place in the Millennium Falcon, and that it would be far better if someone else were there instead.

“Lieutenant Connix is one of the best diplomats we have. She’s been with me since the beginning of the war, and I trust her immensely,” General Organa explains to him when he tries to subtly ask if Rey can take her place. “We need Rey  _ here _ in case the First Order attack. She can do a lot more good protecting what’s left of the Resistance here than she can out there.”

He realises his ability to be subtle is horrendous when General Organa adds, “And Rose Tico, while a fantastic mechanic, isn’t what this mission needs. Like Rey, she can do far more good here, making sure our fleet can get off the ground.”

“But –” Finn begins, and stops when General Organa gives him a stern look and shakes her head.

“Please trust me, Finn,” she says, and he really can’t argue with that.

 

***

 

There’s no reason for Finn and Poe to share quarters on the Millennium Falcon. There’s more than enough room for everyone to have an abundance (over-abundance, Finn thinks) of their own space, but somehow they find themselves sharing a cabin with two bunks, pressed up against opposite walls. They’ve gotten used to each other’s presence, and it would be odd to not fall asleep listening to Poe’s breathing.

They’ve only got enough fuel for one short leap to hyperspace, and so their journey is going to take a day and a half, at least, with the jump to hyperspace covering less than half the total distance. They’re going to Escion VII. Intel that General Organa received before Crait indicated that there was a large Rebel network operating out of the moon’s capital city, and Finn’s trying his best to believe that it might be true.

“Did you really believe that stuff you were saying the other day?” Poe asks. He’s lying on his cot, hands folded on his stomach. He doesn’t look at Finn when he speaks.

Finn shifts, drawing his knees up to his chest. The room suddenly feels too small, and he wishes the lumpy, uncomfortable mattress of his cot would open up and swallow him. But it doesn’t, and so he’s left sitting, watching Poe, and trying to think of a way to respond that won’t make Poe hate him. “Part of me believes it,” Finn settles on. “I try not to but… it’s hard.”

Poe nods. “It’s not true,” he says. “I don’t want to tell you that what you believe is bullshit but, well,” he looks over at Finn. “It’s bullshit, buddy.”

“Is it though?” Finn wonders. He doesn’t want to fight with Poe. He wishes with all this heart he could just  _ agree _ that hope is all they need, that the First Order will never win, that there’s people out there on their side.

“Yeah. I hope you see that, one day,” Poe murmurs.

Finn doesn’t respond. What he wants to say is that  _ he’ll try _ , that  _ he will see soon _ , that  _ he’s getting further and further away from the First Order every day, and if Poe is just patient he promises he’ll get there,  _ but he can’t. The words get stuck in his throat, and he thinks he’ll cry if he opens his mouth. Stormtroopers don’t cry.

“Would you ever leave the Resistance?” Poe asks when he doesn’t respond.

“No,” he lies instinctively, and then sighs. “I was going to.” Finn hates how forced his voice sounds. He takes a deep breath. “That’s how Rose and I met. She caught me trying to run away. Defect.”

Poe’s face twists into a frown, just for a second, until he catches himself and his face turns back to neutral. Finn thinks that the neutrality is almost  _ worse _ , because it signals how upset Poe actually is. The amount of effort he’s putting into trying to hide it makes Finn’s gut wrench.

“You can’t really  _ defect  _ from the Resistance,” Poe says, and it isn’t what Finn was expecting. “We’re not under any government body. We’re not that kind of military. You volunteer to be here and you choose to leave when you want.”

“That doesn’t make it better.”

Poe shakes his head. They both know that the semantics don’t matter. “Why did you try to leave? I know you must have had reasons, and I think I understand, but – I don’t want to be angry at you, so I need you to  _ help _ me understand, Finn.”

Finn doesn’t know if he  _ can _ help Poe understand, because he’s so devoted.  He’s so at home in the Resistance, and puts so much faith in their ability to fight and win that Finn’s logic probably seems crazy. “I guess it came down to my loyalties,” he says. “I’m loyal to the Resistance, sure, but I’m loyal to the Resistance only because it’s the best way to protect the people I love, you know? I was thinking of Rey, mostly. How I could protect her. I know the Resistance wants to help her too but … it’s not the same. Neither of us really belong here. We’re always going to be outsiders.”

Poe bites his lip. “Don’t say that.”

“What?”

“You  _ do  _ belong here. So does Rey.” He sits up and his eyes meet Finn’s so quickly, and the look is so intense, that Finn forgets to breathe. “This can be your home, if you let it.”

Finn shakes his head. “I don’t know what that means. I’ve never had a  _ home  _ before. It’s so easy for you, Poe. You said yourself – you’ve always had people who love you, and you’re so at home in the Resistance that…” he trails off, not really sure where he was going. “It’s so easy for you.”

“Maybe,” Poe says. “Or maybe I have to spend every day reminding myself why I give everything to the Resistance when it keeps killing people  _ I  _ love. Maybe it’s bullshit to think that I haven’t thought about leaving. Everyone thinks about leaving.”

“But they don’t leave. That’s the difference.”

Poe shakes his head. “You can have a home, Finn. Maybe it doesn’t feel like it right now, but I promise you’ll always have a home with us if you want it.” He pauses. “With me, if you want it.” His eyes leave Finn’s when he says that last part, and it makes it feel like there’s some meaning that’s just beyond Finn’s grasp.

“How?” Finn asks, and he feels too young, all of a sudden, too ignorant, and too broken by the First Order. He feels too much of so many things, and he understands so little of it. 

“I don’t know. But… I hope you stay. Even after the war is done.”

Finn tries to imagine what life will be like after the war – what life  _ could  _ be like, because he still isn’t convinced that they’ll survive. It’s not as hard as he thought it would be. He doesn’t really feel like he belongs in the Resistance, but he thinks he probably  _ does _ belong with Rey and Poe and BB-8 and Rose. He doesn’t know if that’s the same as having a home, but it’s a start, maybe.

That night he doesn’t have nightmares. He dreams of Yavin IV.

Dream-Poe sits in a field of bioluminescent flowers. He doesn’t speak when Dream-Finn approaches. He hears Rey laugh somewhere in the distance, and the sound brings with it a soft breeze that caresses his face.  _ Are we home?  _ Finn asks, but Poe just shrugs and offers him a cup of something warm.  _ You’ll see one day _ , he says. The drink smells thick and rich, like a hot pot of caf in the mess hall on D’Qar, but when Finn takes a sip it’s cold and refreshing, with a sharp citrusy aftertaste. He drops the cup and looks back up, and now the field of flowers has bled together with the night sky, and they’re standing, surrounded by millions of tiny pinpricks of light. Poe is staring at him with that look – the one that’s warm and genuine but  _ more  _ than that. Finn blinks and it’s their cave on Chyria, and the stars are mineral deposits. Rey is sitting in the corner with BB-8, and she’s beeping in binary like a droid. Finn is vaguely aware that he must be dreaming. Poe taps him on the shoulder, and they’re back outside now, and Finn feels his breath catch, because it’s Jakku.  _ Don’t worry _ , Poe says,  _ they can’t get us here _ . Poe reaches out and grabs his hand. His voice sounds like it’s coming from miles away. Finn looks down, and the flowers from Yavin IV are growing out of the sand. They twist around his and Poe’s ankles, but Finn doesn’t feel trapped.  _ Look _ , Poe says, and Finn wakes up before he can learn what he’s meant to look at.

Somehow, it leaves him more shaken than his nightmares. When it comes to his nightmares, he knows what they mean. He knows what to expect. But now, he’s left reeling, trying to find meaning behind the bizarre imagery of his dreamscape, trying desperately to cling onto details that he’s not sure were ever there in the first place. He considers that maybe it doesn’t mean anything, but can’t shake the notion that  _ everything _ means  _ something _ .

_ You’ll see one day _ , Dream-Poe repeats in Finn’s ear, and he hope that he will. He hopes that soon he’ll know.

 

***

 

Escion VII’s atmosphere is thick with smog as Poe carefully pilots the Millennium Falcon to land at the bottom of a ravine. It’s a two hour walk into the outskirts of the city, but landing any closer would have been a bigger risk than they were willing to take.

“Our intel implies that the First Order presence here is minimal,” Connix reminds them, before fixing her air-filtration mask over her mouth and nose, her comms device into her ear and a thick pair of goggles over her eyes. While the atmosphere is technically breathable, the smog is unpredictable and thick. “It’s mostly Republic personnel, and those who choose to stay out of shit altogether.”

Finn nods, and stares ruefully at his jacket – Poe’s jacket –  _ their  _ jacket – where it hangs on a hook on the wall before stepping out of the Falcon. A minimal First Order presence is one thing, but a leather jacket with a Resistance patch on the sleeve is something else again.

When they’re on the ground, Poe holds up his hand to signal they stop. He taps his ear and then his mask. “Can everyone hear me?” his voice crackles through the comms device in Finn’s ear. It’s grainy, and reminds him far too much of a voice being filtered through a Stormtrooper helmet.

“Yep,” Finn replies, and Connix follows with an  _ affirmative _ . BB-8 beeps and rolls in a small circle around Poe’s ankles.

Poe nods. “Ok, when we reach the city we need to make sure not to draw attention to ourselves. We’ll try and secure ground transport to the inner city, and then it’s a matter of just trying to find someone or something to lead us to the Rebels.”

It’s a half-baked plan, but Finn vaguely thinks that no mission he’s been on since leaving the First Order has felt well-planned out.

The next two hours are unpleasant. Even through the mask, the air tastes acrid and foul, and dark, thick granules of dust stick to his goggles, making it hard to see. It’s neither hot nor cold, and the wind feels sticky, like it’s moving through Finn rather than past him. Everything is covered by a thin haze of fog, and the sky is dark with clouds, and faintly red. The dual suns of the Escion System are gaping wounds in the sky, bleeding red into the atmosphere and giving everything on the ground a macabre, ghostly quality.

Finn’s foot slips on a loose piece of slate, and he’s grateful for Poe’s hand grabbing his wrist to steady him.

“Thanks,” Finn says, and Poe nods. He imagines he can see him smile behind the mask.

Connix is a few feet ahead, with BB-8 trailing closely behind her, struggling with the uneven texture of the ground. They resume walking, and Poe doesn’t let go of Finn’s wrist. It’s much more comfortable once Finn shifts his grip and entwines their fingers. He notes, absently, that he’d only ever held Poe’s hand through gloves before, and thinks that his hand is softer than Rey’s, fingertips mostly free of calluses. They hold hands, on and off, for the rest of the journey, and Finn thinks it makes it slightly less unpleasant. He only lets go when it’s not practical to keep clinging to Poe, and even then, it’s with a high degree of reluctance. 

The city seems to grow out of nowhere. The landscape is barren, only dust and debris, and then they reach the top of a hill and the city spreads out below them, glittering with millions of tiny lights. It looks alive, like one giant, breathing, metal beast. The tallest buildings in the city centre look like the silhouette of giant fingers, Finn thinks, reaching up towards the red haze of the sky. It’s unsettling.

“Shit,” Poe says, and then lets out a low whistle, which comes through the comms as an unpleasant screech of static. “This place has really gone downhill.”

Poe slips his hand out from Finn’s and places it on his shoulder instead. “You been anywhere like this before?” he asks.

Finn shakes his head.

“Well, welcome to an Outer Rim city,” Connix says dryly, and the only thing settling the inexplicable dread in Finn’s stomach is Poe’s hand on his shoulder.

The first buildings on the edge of the city are dilapidated and mismatched, made of mud-brick, scrap-metal, cloth. Various beings, some humanoid, some not, bustle through the streets and watch from doorways, most with some sort of filtration mask hiding their features. It makes Finn feel desperately sad. He’s reminded of the children on Canto Blight, for reasons he doesn’t really know.

Out of the corner of his eye Finn sees a flash of movement down the street. A child is clutching some sort of machine part tight to his chest, and a much larger figure is pursuing him. Underneath the grotesque mask and flaps of fabric hanging off it’s suit, Finn can’t even tell if it’s human. The larger figure hits the child over the head and pries the machine part from his arms.

“Hey!” Poe shouts, and the figure turns to look at them. “So much for keeping a low profile,” he says, pulling out his blaster and quickly pressing his hand against Finn’s chest. “Come on,” and then they’re pursuing the figure down a winding alleyway.

Finn hears footsteps behind them and turns to see the child following, a hand pressed to the side of his head where he was hit.

The figure quickly darts into a doorway, and tries to push the door closed. Poe slams his shoulder into the door and pushes, and the figure takes several fumbling steps backwards as it swings open. They’re in a small warehouse. Every spare space is filled with parts of ships and machines and droids. It’s all stolen, Finn knows, without having to ask.

Finn fixes his blaster on the figure. “Who are you?” he asks, although it doesn’t really matter. “Are you First Order?”

The figure drops the machine part, and it lands on the pressed-dirt floor with a thud. It holds up it’s hands. “I’m going to take off my helmet,” it says.

Connix nods. “Do it.”

It fumbles for a moment and then is removing the bulky helmet. It’s a woman. She looks about the same age as General Organa, but harder and meaner, her hair a thin white frizz around her deeply lined face.

“I’m not anyone,” she says, and her voice is rough and gritty.

“You’re a thief.” Finn wants to shiver when her emotionless eyes meet his.

“Profit,” is all she says.

Finn feels bile rise in his throat. While not worse than the First Order, evil like this makes Finn angry in a different way. It’s the same evil he saw on Canto Bight, and in DJ. It’s evil that’s not part of some grander narrative, not part of any greater fight. It’s just selfishness and greed. It’s an evil that can’t be stopped by any amount of X-Wing fire or mastery of the Force, because it festers in the dark, dirty corners of the galaxy, and it will always continue to fester, unbothered by the universal balance of good and evil.

The door swings open again, and Finn looks back to see the child running in. “Shoot her!” he shouts, and Finn considers all the suffering that he’s never seen, and never will see, and that will continue for a long time even if the Resistance  _ do  _ win when he sets his blaster to stun and shoots her in the shoulder.

His hands shake slightly as he tucks his blaster back into its holster and slips his mask and goggles off. The child stares at them with wide eyes. “Are… are you Resistance,” he whispers.

Finn doesn’t pause before he nods.

Poe and Connix are also removing their masks and goggles, and then Poe is walking over to the child and lowering himself down to his height. “I’m Poe,” he says, and offers the child his hand to shake.

“I’m Lam,” the child says.

“Do you know who she is?” Poe asks, gesturing toward the women, who lies still in the middle of the room.

“She a bandit,” Lam quavers. “Takes machines and parts from people.”

Poe nods and stands up. He walks over to a bench in the centre of the room and picks up what looks like hardware for a droid, turning it over in his hands, and showing it to BB-8, who lets out a string of despondent beeps.

“Is there someone who can come and arrest her?” Connix asks, and Finn can tell by the look in her eyes that she’s unsure whether any form of police operate here. “And can make sure these things get back to the people they belong to?”

Lam hesitates, then nods. “My sister. She’ll help. She’s going to join the Resistance when I’m old enough to look after myself.” Finn wishes that the slight amount of hope that statement gave him wasn’t so mingled with sadness. He hates seeing children decide to be soldiers, because he knows what it’s like to have your whole life defined by your place in an army (but at least they get to decide to fight, and who to fight for, he thinks).

He returns a few minutes later with a girl whose eyes look far too old for her age.

“You’re looking for the Resistance,” is the first thing she says, and she sounds like a soldier.

“Do you know where we can find them?” Poe asks.

She nods. “In the Yangol district. Just to the north of the main city.” 

The sceptical part of Finn wonders whether they should trust her, but the rest of him thinks they probably should. Her name is Maya, she says. She’s a mechanic, and he helped smuggle some Resistance people onto a cargo carrier a few weeks ago. She’s been wanting to catch this woman for a while. She intimidates the district police, and so they’ve never made any move to catch her, but Maya says that now she’s been caught, and because it was the Resistance, she can convince them to help.

“Do you have any idea how we can get to Yangol?” Poe asks.

Maya nods. “In here somewhere there should be… I know she took them...” she removes the cloths covering several piles of junk, before pulling one off that makes her hum in satisfaction. Finn can’t see what it is until she steps to the side and says. “Here.”

His heart stops for a moment. It’s a pair of First Order land cruiser bikes, complete with a Stormtrooper helmet tucked behind the handlebars of the one on the left. They’re older models, and have definitely been heavily used and damaged, but Finn remembers training on ones just like them when he was barely older than Lam. He feels ill, and is grateful for Poe’s hand on his back, grounding him.

Finn tries to stifle the sense of urgency for the next few hours while they wait to make sure everything is going to go how Maya said it would, to make sure that they haven’t turned up, disrupted a neighbourhood, and then left the moment they got what they wanted, leaving behind nothing but chaos. (Because that’s what the First Order does. They come, and they bring chaos, and the consequences don’t matter. They don’t stop to think about who gets hurt. They don’t  _ care  _ about who gets hurt. You obey. You achieve. You move on.) Maya collects a group of people who she says are the mostly-unofficial keepers of law and order, and they handcuff the bandit, and assure them that everything is fine. The woman who appears to be in charge tells them that they’ve done a good service to this neighbourhood, far more than the Republic ever did, and far more than they could achieve with their limited resources. 

When it’s time to leave, they roll the bikes out of the warehouse, and leave behind the Stormtrooper helmet. Finn feels like it’s eyes are following him, saying  _ traitor _ ,  _ coward _ ,  _ disgrace _ . Poe must notice that something is wrong, because he stops Finn just inside the doorway, with a hand placed gently on his hip. “Are you alright?” he asks.

Finn nods, and then shakes his head. “I will be,” he replies, and he hopes it’s not a lie.

Poe bites his lip. “You’ll never be anything other than a good man. Remember that.”  

They’re standing very close, Finn realises. There’s a pull that’s telling him  _ closer _ , and he’s never been very good at impulse control (it was an impulse that led him to Poe, in the first place), and so he grabs the front of Poe’s shirt, and presses his forehead against his shoulder, and just  _ breathes _ . Poe stiffens, momentarily, and then relaxes, and his hands press hard into Finn’s hips. It’s easier, at this moment, for Finn to think of himself the way Poe thinks of him. He doesn’t feel brave, or good, or any of the things Poe tells him he is, but when Poe’s voice, low and raspy, says in Finn’s ear  _ you’re good, Finn _ , he almost believes it.

Finn doesn’t say anything, because if he opens his mouth he isn’t sure what will come out. It could be  _ I don’t believe you _ , or it could be  _ thank you for trusting me _ , or it could be  _ I think I love you _ ,  _ and it terrifies me, a bit _ .

After a moment he pulls away, and instantly misses the contact. “Come on,” he says, and his voice is embarrassingly hoarse. They put back on their masks and goggles, and he misses being able to see Poe eyes. (He went so many years with barely seeing anyone’s eyes, and he doesn’t know if that’s why he can’t get enough of Poe’s, or if it’s just because Poe is intoxicating, beautiful, far too much for Finn to handle).

Finn slides onto one of the bikes, and Poe doesn’t ask before sliding in behind him, wrapping his arms firmly around Finn’s hips.

“May I?” he asks, too late (and Finn was never going to say  _ no _ , anyway).

“I guess the rumors are true. Pilots can’t drive,” Finn jokes, and Poe chuckles. Finn wishes the masks were gone, because he knows he would have been able to feel Poe’s breath on his neck. He doesn’t know why it matters.

“Untrue. I’m easily the best driver I know. It’s not my fault the ground is so much more boring.”

“Rude, the ground has lots to offer. Shrubbery is very underrated, really. And damn, wait till you hear about  _ moss _ . You don’t get that in the sky.”

Poe laughs, and Finn feels it vibrate through his whole body. Finn hasn’t heard a lot of music, but he thinks there’s no way any of it is more beautiful than this.

Finn’s attention is drawn away by BB-8 rolling up, letting off a series of upset-sounding beeps. Poe doesn’t need to speak droid to know it’s something along the lines of  _ how dare you abandon me to ride with Finn, I’ve never been more betrayed _ . “I know, pal,” Poe responds. “Connix will take good care of you.” 

BB-8’s tone turns to one of suspicion, and it flicks it’s single eye from Poe to Finn and back again.

“It’s not like that,” Poe laughs, and then “hey, don’t say that about Finn,” when BB-8 lets out a high-pitched  _ whir _ .

“What did BB-8 say?” Finn asks when the droid has rolled away, and is unhappily being secured to the back of Connix’s bike.

“He’s full of shit,” Poe responds, and it doesn’t answer Finn’s question in the slightest.

 

***

 

The city rushes past, all sound, and silver, and neon. Finn can almost let himself forget that they’re on a mission, that the fate of the Resistance is more-or-less with them, because it’s beautiful, in a way Finn hasn’t experienced before. Poe’s hands are warm against his stomach, and he can feel him press his forehead against his neck and laugh when they speed too fast around a corner. Finn can’t hold back a loud cheer. The dual suns have almost sunk below the horizon, and with the dark, Escion VII seems less menacing. Finn wants to pull the bike over and take off their masks, and study the way the neon lights reflect in Poe’s eyes. He wants to breathe Poe in, forget the acrid smells of the planet around them, and just focus on the sharp, earthy scent of Poe’s skin. He wants to press his face to Poe’s neck and breathe, breathe,  _ breathe _ . He imagines the feel of Poe’s stubble against his cheek, and wonders what it would feel like against his lips.

Finn wants to ask Poe if he feels it too, the static buzz, like this moment is alive.

The fuels cells in their bike hum and die, and when they pull over he instantly misses the feeling of Poe pressed against his back. When Connix and BB-8 pull up beside them, BB-8 beeps excitedly.  _ The air is safe to breathe, now _ , Poe translates.  _ The smog has cleared. _ Finn feels a million times freer the moment his mask and goggles are tucked into his pack.

“We can walk the rest of the way,” Connix says.

Poe nods, and Finn was right. He looks so beautiful, all dappled in pink and blue neon. His hair is a mess from the ride, and Finn finds himself wanting to run his hands through it, and can’t help but give into the urge shortly after, while they’re walking through an alleyway that smells of unfamiliar spices and the sharp tang of iron. He steps in front of Poe, and grins at him, walking backwards for a few steps and just  _ appreciating _ the way Poe looks. Then, he reaches forward and runs both his hands through Poe’s hair, pushing it back from his face, and it only lasts a minute, but Finn see’s Poe’s breath catch. He lets his thumb linger on Poe’s cheek for only a second longer before falling back into step next to him.

“What was that for?” Poe asks, voice hoarse.

“You just look beautiful in this light,” Finn responds. A small part of him says  _ that’s not an appropriate thing to say to your friends _ , but another part says  _ I don’t care, it’s true _ , and that’s the one he decides to listen to.

Poe inhales sharply and looks at Finn with something he wants to identify as awe (but that can’t be right, and so he chooses not to identify it at all).“Oh man,” Poe breathes. “If you could only see yourself.” His eyes run across Finn’s face, and down his neck, and then back up to his eyes. “It’s – you’re –  _ fuck,  _ Finn,” is all he says, and Finn tells pretends that he doesn’t understand what that means.

 

***

 

If you’d asked him weeks ago why he was with the Resistance, his answer would have been  _ Rey, only Rey _ . He was sympathetic to the cause, but he didn’t love it – not yet – not in the way he loved Rey. But then. But then Canto Blight happened. He saw where being in it (the galactic  _ it _ , the cosmic  _ it _ ) only for yourself, for your direct orbit, could lead. To a life of moral ambiguity, of betraying those who hesitantly gave you their trust. He didn’t want that.

And then Crait happened. He was willing to die, and it wasn’t really for Rey. It was for the Resistance, for the cause, for something far bigger than himself and the people in his proximity.  _ But is that true? _ a small part of him asks, thinking of Rose and Poe and General Organa, and how he had thought of them, bright and vivid, as he flew his ship towards the heart of the cannon, not of the Resistance insignia or of galactic peace.

Something occurs to him that he hadn’t really thought of before (but he thinks is probably what Rose was  _ trying  _ to tell him, even if he wasn’t ready yet to understand) and it’s this:

Maybe there is no loyalty for the cause without loyalty to the people you love. He thinks of Poe telling him why he joined the Resistance, and why he stays, and beneath the  _ it’s the right thing to do _ ’s, and the  _ I couldn’t sit back and let the First Order win _ ’s, there’s always undertones of  _ for my parents _ ,  _ for my friends _ ,  _ for people who deserve to live _ . He thinks that maybe –  _ maybe  _ – that’s why he could never love the First Order the way he loves the Resistance. The Resistance isn’t demanding his love. While the First Order screamed  _ love me or else  _ (or else beatings and brainwashing and being ripped apart by the vacuum of space), the Resistance whispers  _ fight for those you love, and you may fall in love with the cause in the meantime _ .

He’s fallen in love with many things since coming alive (since being born from that cage of white plasteel armour), and one of them is the Resistance. (And one of them – if he lets himself think about it for long enough – might also be Poe).

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Finn’s life began that day, when he looked into the crowd of innocents and decided not to shoot_

(iii)

 

They reach the Yangol District, and Finn thinks  _ yes _ , this looks like somewhere the Resistance would be. It’s alive, he thinks, and gritty, and so far from the monotonous sterility of the First Order.

“What are we looking for?” Poe asks, and Connix shakes her head.

“I don’t know. But we’ll know it when we see it.”

And she’s right. When they see it, they know. Or more: when it sees BB-8 it knows. BB-8 stops, and lets out a long, low, long beep, and a droid rolls out of an alleyway. They have a brief conversation in binary, and BB-8 lets out a high, excited whirr, and Poe and Connix both gasp.

“What is it? What’s happening?” Finn asks.

“The droid is with a group of Rebels,” Poe translates. A wide grin spreads across his face, and he lets out a cheer, and he hugs Finn, and laughs. “They’re here. The intel was right!”  

Poe pulls back and Finn can’t help but smile. He wonders if this is what hope feels like (and knows instantly that  _ yes _ . This is hope).

They follow the droid through some winding back alleys, and it leads them to a door. The droid connects to a keypad and beeps, and then the door is opening. Before Finn has time to process much, BB-8 is whirring and rolling into the building.

“BB-8!” a voice shouts, and it’s one that Finn knows he’s heard before, but can’t remember where.

Poe gasps, and then is running inside. “Jessika!” he yells, and when Finn steps inside Poe is hugging a dark haired woman, who he thinks he vaguely remembers seeing on D’Qar.

“Oh my god, Poe. I thought you were dead,” Finn hears her whisper, and he feels like he’s invading a private moment.

“Where have you been?” he asks, pulling back.

“I –” Jessika starts, and then her eyes land on Finn. “Hey, is that the Stormtrooper?”

He is suddenly very aware of the other people in the room. One of them pulls out their blaster.

Finn’s stomach drops. “Yes,” he says, at the same time Poe says,  _ no, that’s Finn _ . 

Jessika narrows her eyes and stares at Finn for a moment, and then looks back at Poe, and they seem to have a whole conversation with their eyes. “Okay,” Jessika agrees after a moment. “Nice to officially meet you, Finn. I’m Jessika Pava.” She steps forward and shakes his hand. She turns to the man who took his blaster out. “Calm the fuck down, Audo. They’re Resistance.” The man hesitates, and then puts his blaster back in its holster.

“Hi,” Finn says. He decides instantly that Jessika Pava is absolutely terrifying, in a wonderful sort of way, and he can’t wait for Rey to meet her.

“Jess, where the fuck have you been?” Poe asks again.

She nods and leads them over to a table in the corner of the room. The building looks like it used to be a bar of some sort, Finn thinks. The place is adorned with broken, unlit neon tubes hanging forlornly from the walls. For Finn’s benefit, Jessika gives the premise of a mission Blue Squadron had been sent on before the evacuation of D’Qar. She tells them how it went wrong, how she barely escaped, how she watched TIE fighters shoot her friends out of the sky.

They’re silent for a long time and then Poe takes a deep breath and asks: “Snap. Did he…”

Jessika shakes her head. “I don’t know. I hope he survived but,” her voices cracks. “I saw his ship get shot down.”

Finn can feel Poe’s grief in an instant, like a fog rolling out, and he grabs his hand under the table, and hopes that it helps, even just a bit.

Jessika continues, telling them about how she’s been gathering people for a while now, trying to find some way to locate the main Resistance forces. There’s about three-hundred of them, she says, spread throughout the city. In turn, Poe tells her about everything. His voice shakes when he mentions how many people died taking out the Dreadnought, how many people died in the escape pods, how many people died on Crait. Finn watches Jess’ eyes sink when she realises how weakened the Resistance is.

“Fuck,” she says, and then, “I could really use a drink, right about now. You don’t happen to have a flask hidden away, do you?”

Poe lets out a dry laugh and shakes his head. “The First Order blew up all my whiskey.”

“Bastards.”

Poe nods. “It was the good shit too, all the way from T’Ucholla.”

“T’Ucholloan whiskey?” Jess whistles appreciatively. “That’s really the last straw. We _have_ _to_ win this war, now.”

 

***

 

Jess declares that they’re not going anywhere until morning, because they look exhausted, and Finn is honestly too tired to argue, which probably means she has a good point. Connix stays downstairs, speaking with one of the Rebels who Finn thinks must be her friend (probably thought long dead, probably grieved), and Jess leads Finn and Poe upstairs and shows them a series of small, unlit rooms. They remind Finn of prison cells.

“They used to be offices, I think” she explains, wincing slightly.

“The Resistance was never gonna win any awards for interior design,” Poe replies, his eyes shifting over the windowless grey walls and dusty corners. “Thanks Jess.”

The moment the door is shut behind them, Poe leans up against the wall, and closes his eyes, and breathes. Finn doesn’t ask before wrapping his arms around Poe’s shoulders and drawing him close. He doesn’t say  _ I’m sorry about your friend _ , because he knows it doesn’t count for much. His apologies won't help, instead he just lets Poe cry. It’s mostly silent, and he feels it in the way Poe’s shoulders shake more than he hears it. 

“Fuck,” Poe says, after a bit, pulling away from Finn. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologise,” Finn replies.

They lay their sleeping mats down next to each other, and sit. It’s a while before Poe says, “People die in war. That’s part of it.” His voice is quiet, and he lets out a shaky breath before continuing. “I wish it got easier, the more people die, but it doesn’t.”

“How do you deal with it?” Finn asks, and he knows it’s probably not the most helpful question, but he needs to know (he needs to know in case the inevitable happens, and he loses someone before the war ends).

Poe’s stare is intense when he says, “On one hand, you don’t. You don’t forget anyone, really.” He pauses. “But you sure as hell don’t stop fighting. That’s how you deal with it. You take that hurt, and let it remind you what you’re fighting for. You take that grief, and you fucking shove it up the ass of the First Order.”

Finn knows Poe doesn’t sleep well that night, because he lies there for hours, awake as well, feeling Poe toss and turn next to him.

“Finn?” Poe whispers into the darkness.

“Yeah,” Finn replies. He opens his eyes and looks at Poe, and doesn’t need any more words to help him decide what to do next. He shuffles closer to Poe, and grabs his hand, and draws him close to his chest, and lets him breathe. That annoying, tiny part of Finn that says  _ this isn’t appropriate, the way you feel for him is confusing, soldiers suffer in silence _ rears its head, but when Poe shifts against him, and his hair brushes Finn’s chin, it leaves.

“I never thought that  _ this _ would be how we ended up sleeping together for the first time,” Poe whispers. “In some shitty room on Escion VII, when I’m emotionally fucked up. Didn’t even let you buy me a drink first.”

“It would have been much nicer if it were  _ our _ shitty room on Chyria,” Finn agrees, deliberately ignoring the last part. “Although I can just about guarantee that  _ I’d  _ still be emotionally fucked up,” and Poe laughs.

“Me too, really. I think everyone’s a bit fucked up, at this point.”

A few minutes pass, and he can’t hold it in any more, so Finn says: “Does that mean you’ve thought about this before?”

It seems like hours go by before Poe whispers  _ yes _ , and it thrums through Finn like thunder.

_ I love you _ , he wants to say, but he doesn’t, because the moment isn’t right, and the fallout would be more than Finn can deal with right now. More than Poe can deal with, probably. He doesn’t know why it’s so much harder saying it to Poe, rather than saying it to Rey or Rose, because he loves Poe so,  _ so  _ much. There’s no doubt left about that fact. (There was never really any doubt. He can’t pinpoint when he started loving Poe, but he thinks it might have been the moment he first saw him, even if he didn’t know what the feeling was yet).

_ I love you _ , Finn thinks, as he feels Poe’s breathing even out with the onset of sleep, and hopes that the universe carries the message to Poe, and makes him understand.

 

***

 

They wake early the next morning and head downstairs. There are about half a dozen of Jess’ soldiers (allies, friends) spaced around the tables, and they look closely at Finn and Poe and they walk in. Finn thinks he sees a mixture of admiration (mostly directed at Poe) and suspicion (mostly directed at him).

Jessika wanders in not long later, and Poe excuses himself to go talk to her, with a _hold tight, buddy, I’ll be back in a moment_. Sitting alone in this room of strangers, Finn feels again like he did when he first arrived on D’Qar, hyper-aware of all the people watching him with intense distrust. He doesn’t get that anymore from their group of Resistance fighters, not since the Starkiller, and definitely not since Crait, and he’d kinda forgotten how much it hurt, how much it twisted together his insides and made him question whether _maybe they_ _were right_ , maybe he can’t be trusted.

He tries to focus on eating his breakfast (a grey, tasteless porridge) and wishes Poe would come back.

“Hey, you,” a voice says, and Finn looks up to see a man standing over him, hand on his blaster. He thinks it might be the same man who drew his blaster last night. “Pava called you a Stormtrooper. That true?”

“Not anymore,” he says carefully.

“But you  _ were _ a Stormtrooper. It’s true?”

Finn nods, because he guesses this is happening, and there’s no point lying about it. Nothing he says or does will make this man hate him any less, and the part of him that’s wired to think in terms of strategy says,  _ let him get angry, and then he’ll leave. There’s no point making a scene. _ The man slams a hand down on the table and stares at Finn. “Stormtroopers killed my family, you fucking scum.”  

“Resistance scum,” Finn says through gritted teeth, the words feeling as true as the first time he uttered them, and the man is about to say something else, and then Poe is standing behind him. He taps him on the shoulder and the man turns around.

“Hey pal, there’s something on your face,” Poe says.

“ _ What _ ?” the man hisses, confused.

“This,” and Poe smirks and punches him in the nose.

Finn can’t hold back his laugh, and Poe meets his eyes, and he’s grinning, and the room is chaos. The man yells something obscene at Poe and tries to punch him back, but Poe ducks and grabs his arms, wrestling them behind his back, and Jess is running over, saying  _ Poe, what the fuck are you doing _ , and Poe ignores her.

“Listen here, you piece of shit,” he snarls into the man’s ear. “Finn is the best man I’ve ever met. He’s far fucking better than you’ll ever be, that’s for sure.”

“You do know you’re fucking a Stormtrooper, yeah?” the man retorts, struggling against Poe’s hold. Heat rises to Finn’s cheeks, and he opens his mouth to say  _ that’s not how it is _ , but Poe glares at him, and it says  _ it’s not worth it, now’s not the time _ , and so he stays quiet.

Poe locks his jaw and tightens his grip. “Finn is a hero.” The way he says it is so matter-of-fact.

“What the hell is happening, Dameron?” Jessika barks.

“This man is a piece of shit, is what’s happening,” Poe says, and the same time the man says, “Your  _ friend  _ is a fucking traitor.”

“Are you kidding me,” Jess says, more to herself than anyone, and then fixes Poe and the other man with an intense gaze. “Poe, first of all, please don’t go punching people who want to help us, but second of all, good job, he deserved it.”

Poe blinks, and the man huffs and lets out some weak protest.

“Oh, shut the fuck up, Audo,” she grumbles. “If you don’t want to get punched maybe you shouldn’t talk shit about Finn. Especially not in front of Poe.”

Poe releases Audo, who tries to give him a push, but Poe steps backwards smoothly and sticks up his middle finger.

Once things have calmed down, and Audo has skulked upstairs, nursing his blood nose, Poe slides into the seat next to Finn.

“Sorry,” Poe says. “I know I should have let you defend yourself, but he was just so dumb I  _ had to _ punch him, y’know?”

Finn nods. “Thank you.” He thinks he should mind more that Poe defended him but… he doesn’t. And he isn’t really sure what to do with that, so he files it away with all the other confusing things that he consciously ignores.

“And I’m generally sorry that some people don’t see you for who you really are,” Poe continues, eyes wandering across Finn’s face, and brows furrowed.

Finn sighs, and he lays his head on Poe’s shoulder, and Poe doesn’t stiffen, or flinch, or show any surprise, and in return just grab’s Finn’s hand under the table, letting his fingers trail gently across his palm and up the lengths of his fingers. “At least I’ve got a hero pilot guy to defend me,” Finn says. “Otherwise I would’ve had to punch him myself, and like… I’m  _ eating breakfast _ . Blood and porridge don’t go great together.”

Poe’s laugh feels like the first time Finn ever felt a sunrise. He’d sat by the edge of the forest on D’Qar, and watched the sky turn soft purple. He’d closed his eyes, just for a few minutes, and as the sunlight touched his skin he felt like he was melting, but in the best way. Like he was winter, cold and bleak and lifeless, but now was spring, and was bursting at the seams with new life, new hope. He’d felt the breeze against his neck, and the crisp morning air streaming into his lungs, and thought,  _ it can’t get better than this _ . Then he opened his eyes. He was momentarily blinded, but then his vision cleared and he saw the pinks, the oranges, the soft blues, and it was so beautiful, and he thought  _ no, I was wrong. It can’t get better than this _ .

And then there was Poe, and every instant is that revelation born anew. Every laugh, every touch, it’s that moment again.  _ It can’t get better than this _ , Finn will think to himself, and then it does. And then it always does.

 

***

(Finn wonders whether, like all things, this is finite, and whether it will reach a point where there is no  _ better _ . He wonders if he’ll ever get used to Poe, or whether he’ll always continue to be more beautiful than Finn can fathom. He wonders whether one day he’ll look up at the sunrise, and won’t even blink, whether he’ll come to find the warmth on his skin mundane.

He doesn’t think so. He thinks he could stare at the sunrise for the rest of his life, and still find it hard to breathe when those first rays hit his skin, and the breeze touches his neck, and the world comes alive around him. And he thinks it’s the same with Poe. He thinks he’ll probably love him, always, and that it’ll only keep getting better.)

 

***

 

It happens like this:

Jess has sent out the coordinates of the Rebel base on Chyria to the people she trusts the most. A handful of them, mostly those from the building in Yangol, are getting ready to board the Millenium Falcon. The rest will follow from different areas on the moon. It takes about half a day to reach the edge of the city by foot, and then it’s another two hours to the Falcon. Everything goes smoothly, without incident, until the moment it doesn’t.

It happens like this:

They can see the Falcon, when suddenly the dust shifts, and out of it is rising a First Order land vehicle, and Stormtroopers are pouring out. Someone gets hit before anyone really knows what’s happening, and suddenly the world is blaster fire, and smoke, and dust being kicked up as they sprint towards the Falcon, dodging and weaving and shooting.

It happens like this:

Poe yells and pushes Jessika out of the way of a line of blaster beam, and then he screams and he’s on the ground, and the world shifts, and suddenly Finn can hear nothing, can only see the blood billowing across Poe’s chest. Jessika shouts something as she lifts Poe’s arm around her shoulder, but it sounds like the words are being screamed through water, and Finn grabs his other side, and they drag him forwards, hoping that by some miracle they don’t get shot. 

Finn doesn’t know how they reach the Falcon, but they do. They drag Poe to a cot, and Jessika is swearing and tearing open medkits, and disinfecting, bandaging, and Poe is unconscious, and pale, and Finn feels frozen, and he tells himself to  _ wake up, wake up, wake up _ , because he’s had this nightmare before, and he knows that when he wakes up Poe will be asleep on the other side of the room, and it’ll be okay. 

“ _ Finn! _ ” Jess shouts, and his cheek is stinging, and he realises she slapped him. He thinks she must have called his name several times already. “Fucking freak out later, yeah? I need you to come apply pressure.” 

Finn’s hands shake as he presses them against Poe’s chest. 

“It’s okay,” Jess is saying while she’s digging through cupboards, and it’s more to herself than Finn. Her voice sounds like it’s coming from a million miles away. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” she repeats to herself. “It was below the lungs. Hit his side. Probably didn’t get any major organs. It’s fine.” 

Then, she’s pushing Finn aside and pressing a square of bacta gel to the wound, and then is stepping backwards and running her hand through her hair. “Okay,” she says. “Okay.” 

Poe groans, and doesn’t wake up, but noise is good, Finn thinks. Noise seems good.

“You stupid fucker,” Jess hisses at Poe. 

Finn’s hand are red with blood, and it doesn’t occur to him to wash it off. Instead he just sits, and waits, and hopes, and the room smells of sweat and iron and panic.

 

***

 

Poe wakes up a few hours later, and winces when he tries to sit up. It’s taking three of Jessika’s people to pilot the Falcon, and Finn thinks proudly of how Rey did it all by herself.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Finn cautions, carefully pushing him back down. “Go easy.” Poe groans and closes his eyes. “How are you feeling?” Finn asks.

“Great,” Poe rasps. “I love getting shot. Easily one of my favourite ways to spend an afternoon.” 

“I’m going to take the sarcasm as a good sign.”

Poe opens his eyes and looks at Finn, who’s still standing over him. “Is everyone else okay?” 

Finn hesitates. “No, but – well two people didn’t make it, but – everyone that matters – not  _ matters _ , because everyone matters, but… everyone you  _ know _ made it.” 

Poe sighs in relief, and then winces again at the pain in his side. 

“It didn’t hit any major organs,” Finn explains.

“Skin is the biggest organ,” Poe mutters absently, his eyes closed in pain.

He asks Poe if he’ll be okay alone, and then runs to get Jessika and BB-8. The moment Jess sees Poe she looks like she’s about to cry. “You dumbass,” she says. “I’d punch you, but then I’d just have to do more first-aid.” 

“Ungrateful,” Poe murmurs, but he smiles, and Finn thinks that he really doesn’t understand their friendship. 

Finn steps outside so they can have a moment alone, but has nowhere else to go and so just ends up standing in the middle of the hall. He closes his eyes and breathes, and tries to make his heart rate slow. Poe is alive. He’s fine. It’s all fine. 

His hands shake, and he realises they’re still covered in blood. He stands at the sink in the fresher and scrubs until his skin stings, but it still doesn’t feel like enough.

When Jessika leaves, he sits back with Poe until he falls back asleep, and wonders if this is how Poe felt when Finn was in the coma on D’Qar. Maybe, he decides, but thinks that there’s no way it would have been this intense, the feeling of dread and worry and relief, because they barely knew each other. Not yet. Not like this. (But there was still something there, Finn knows that. Something that makes everything since feel like an inevitable progression). He holds Poe’s hand, and sits until his back aches, and then stays sitting, and he falls asleep like that, and his mind replays the image of Poe being shot again, again,  _ again _ . 

He wakes with a start, and Poe is watching him.

“What were you dreaming?” he asks, and squeezes Finn’s hand. 

Finn stares at Poe, at the curve of his jaw, at the way his eyelashes curve against his cheek, at the loose curl resting gently on his forehead. He pushes the curl back with his spare hand, and lets his fingers trace over Poe’s forehead, and down to cup his cheek. The stubble is rough against his palm, and Poe’s skin is warm, and he’s alive. “It doesn’t matter,” Finn says, eventually. “You’re alive.”

“I’m alive,” Poe confirms, and he closes his eyes and turns his face so his lips brush against Finn’s palm. It only lasts a moment, and then he’s saying, “You need to get some proper sleep, Finn. You look like shit.” 

Finn shakes his head. “I’m fine. I want to stay here. I’ll sleep when we get back.” And it’s a lie, but he hopes Poe believes it.

“Bring that over here,” Poe says, pointing at the other cot in the room. “Sleep. Win-win situation.” 

Finn nods, and he does, and then slips off his jacket and boots, and then him and Poe are lying face-to-face, separated only by the few inches between cots. 

“Thanks for not dying,” Finn whispers.

“Same goes for you.” 

Poe lifts his arm, grimacing when it pulls at his bandages. He touches Finn’s shoulder, then his neck, then his face. “You changed my life, Finn,” he says quietly, and it feels like a secret. “You don’t even know.”

It’s inconceivable, almost, that statement, because Poe helped give Finn the opportunity to live, and it never really occurred to Finn that he affected Poe’s life in any comparable way. Poe helped give him a real life. Poe didn’t  _ create _ him – he didn’t make Finn into a person when he gave him his name, or when he piloted the TIE fighter out of the Starkiller. Finn created himself. Finn’s life began that day, when he looked into the crowd of innocents and decided not to shoot. When he saw a Resistance pilot and thought,  _ this is an opportunity _ . When they crashed into the desert, and he was instantly alone in a brand new universe. When he ripped off the last of the Stormtrooper armour, and found the jacket left behind, the only reminder of the man who helped him escape, and he’d wanted to cry and scream and laugh all at once, because he was free. Even if they caught him again instantly, even if they made sure he died in unimaginable agony, an example to the rest of the Stormtroopers ( _ this is what happens if you leave _ ) – he was free. 

And Poe. And Poe was a part of that. Finn thinks  _ yes _ , he would have gotten out with or without him, because the moment he decided not to shoot was the moment his choice was made, and he would have escaped or died trying. But Poe was  _ there _ . Finn brought himself to life, and Poe was there to witness it, and he immediately saw Finn as who he was in that instant, as who he  _ could be _ in the future, rather than as a soldier, a machine, a number. Finn brought himself to life, and then he fell in love.

“You changed mine,” Finn says, and it’s an understatement.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Finn feels his love for Poe burned into the fabric of the universe, and thinks it was probably there since the beginning of time, just waiting for him to come to life and find it._

(iv)

 

They arrive back on Chyria with exactly two-hundred and sixty-three new people, as well as a full load of food and medical supplies, picked up from a trading outpost on Escion III. The mood on base instantly shifts, and Finn thinks that where hope used to be intangible, distant, something mentioned but only reluctantly believed, it’s now tangible, and real, and here. 

Finn helps Poe down from the Millenium Falcon, and still has his arm around Poe’s waist when Rey runs up and hugs him. Finn doesn’t want to remove his arm from Poe, and so instead brings him into the hug, and then the three of them are wrapped in each other. The wind is gentle, and the sun is warm, and the ground smells damp from recent rain, and it’s the most loved he’s ever felt. 

Poe is consigned to bed-rest, and he mostly ignores it and sits outside, and so Finn sits with him. BB-8 is there too, and occasionally lets out a string of beeps that Poe will find helpful, and will mean nothing to Finn. Poe talks a lot, like the silence scares him. He talks about his childhood, his family, about missions he’s flown for the Resistance. On the third day he talks about the Dreadnought.

“I fucked up real bad, Finn,” he says. “I got… lost, for a bit. I was only thinking about how to hurt them. I wasn’t thinking properly.” He closes his eyes, and his fists are clenched in his lap, and his knee hasn’t stopped bouncing anxiously since he started. “General Organa re-promoted me, but I don’t deserve it.  _ Commander Dameron _ ,” he spits, like the words are venomous, and then lets out a short laugh.  

He pauses and then leans forward and runs his hands through his hair, and stays there like that. He won’t meet Finn’s eyes. 

“I guess this is why I’m not the brains behind these things,” his mouth twitches into a smirk, but it’s cold, and almost frantic. “I fly, I shoot, and I’m fucking good at it, but that’s all I’ve got. I used to  _ think  _ before I did stuff. And I used to be good at it, but since…” his voice shakes and he trails off. “I still feel him in my head, rattling around in there with the Force. And I was  _ so sure  _ I was gonna die.” 

Finn doesn’t know what he can say that will help, and so he just listens. 

“I can’t seem to make a good choice anymore, Finn. Everything I think is right just ends up hurting people. Like with Holdo – I was so sure that I was doing the right thing. I didn’t trust her the moment I saw her, because you could just  _ tell _ , y’know, that she was…” he trails off. “But that was wrong.” 

“I think,” Finn starts, and then bites his lip. He wishes he was wise, but he doesn’t feel wise. He feels young and ignorant and like he’s far too flawed to be giving any advice. He knows what he wants Poe to understand, but he doesn’t know how to make it into  _ words _ rather than vague feelings. “I think everyone is wrong sometimes. And I think just because you were wrong a few times doesn’t mean that you’re not – not  _ smart _ , or not a good Commander. It just means you’re a person.” 

“Being a person is shit sometimes,” Poe mutters.

“But it’s also really good sometimes,” Finn reminds him. “Like… think about that story you were telling me before. About that mission to Bespin with Snap and Jess, where you saved everyone. Or any of the times you’ve saved me. Or when you literally  _ just _ got shot saving Jess  _ again _ .”

“I know. I know,” Poe sighs. “I’m honestly just being dramatic, buddy.” 

BB-8 whirrs, and it sounds sarcastic, and Finn thinks it’s probably a comment on Poe’s regular levels of drama. 

“No one’s denying that being a person can suck,” Finn shrugs. “Continue to be dramatic.” 

“Y’know, the whole  _ worldly, knowledgeable friend _ look suits you. Should consider it as a full-time gig, if the whole dashingly handsome Resistance hero thing doesn’t work out.”

Finn shakes his head, and ignores the blush creeping onto his cheeks. “I literally never know what I’m talking about. I probably wouldn’t listen to me.”

“We just established that I don’t make good choices so,” Poe straightens his back and rolls his shoulders, “I’m gonna do it anyway.” 

“Besides,” Finn adds, “there’s lots of good things about being a person that don’t have to do with the war. Like, have you tried those fruits we bought on Escion III?” his eyes widen. “The red ones? They’re so good.”

“Apples?” Poe asks incredulously, and Finn nods. 

“Yeah, apples. I didn’t know things like that existed.”

Poe bites his lip and looks at Finn, and eyes are slightly sad, but then he smiles and says, “You’re right. Apples are definitely worth all the suffering that comes from being a disaster of a person.”

Finn is quiet for a moment and then he meets Poe’s eyes. “You’ll always be more than the mistakes you make,” he says, and it’s quiet and a promise. “Don’t blame yourself for the way things happened, and I know you  _ will _ , so that’s not a useful thing to say but… I’ve seen a lot of bad in the universe, Poe. And it’s not you. You’re… you’re not perfect, but you’re more than enough.  _ I _ think so, anyway. And I hope that counts for something.”

_ You’re brave, and good and never give up _ is what he wants to say.  _ And those things make you beautiful _ is what he wants to say.  _ And I love you for it _ is what he wants to say.

The moment is broken by BB-8 beeping loudly, and Poe glares at it and doesn’t translate.

 

***

 

When Poe is given the all clear by a medic, he decides they should have a party. Finn has never been to a party before, and has only a vague idea of what one entails. Poe says that nothing will cement the new hope granted by their new additions more than music, and dancing, and food, and Jessika agrees.

“Have you ever been to a party before?” Finn whispers to Rose while they’re sitting in the mess tent eating breakfast. 

She nods. “They’re usually fun.” 

“What do you – what do you even  _ do _ ?” he asks, and Rose purses her lips in thought.

“You just have fun. There’s food and music and sometimes alcohol, and you can dance, or just talk to people. The point is to kinda just… forget the world for a while, you know?” 

Finn thinks that sounds good. He could do with a bit of forgetting. “Rey, are you gonna come to the thing tonight?” he asks when she joins them at their table. 

She and Rose look at each other for a moment, and it seems like there’s something going on that Finn isn’t privy to. “Yes, I think I will,” Rey says, and her eyes wander over Rose, and Rose blushes, which is definitely something Finn is going to ask about at some point. 

“Parties need decorations,” Poe tells him later, when he asks if there’s anything he can do to help. “You’re way craftier than I am, if that’s something you want to get on.” 

Finn blinks and nods. “Cool,” he says. “Cool. I definitely know what to do. Easy,” and he’s lying through his teeth, because he has no idea how to make decorations or what that even  _ means _ , really. 

He spends a while wandering through the outer edges of the forest, and then decides that he’ll… knit some long chains? And stick flowers in the holes? And it’ll probably be very decorative? He feels grossly unqualified, and doesn’t even really know what the point of the decorations  _ is _ , or if there is a point at all. He spends the next few hours creating, and lets himself be lulled into a relaxed daze by that calming monotony and the satisfaction of bringing something into being. He drapes the chains between the trees and poles surrounding their main clearing, and for good measure brings out some of his knitted blankets and places them over the mismatched collection of seats and logs and stones. He doesn’t think it looks very good at all, so he adds more flowers and leaves, until just about every surface is at least partially covered. He literally doesn’t know what he’s doing and hopes it’s not that obvious.

Jess and Poe had gotten permission from General Organa to make a quick run to a nearby trading outpost to get supplies that they’d argued were absolutely  _ essential  _ for keeping morale high, and thus absolutely  _ essential  _ for the Resistance as a whole. Finn hates how dangerous even such a simple mission is, and spends the whole time they’re gone quietly fuming, because he hates Poe for being so reckless. But then they return home, and Poe drops his helmet and hugs him the moment he steps out of his ship, and he could never hate Poe, not really. 

Turns out that the  _ essential  _ supplies Poe and Jessika had flown out to get were variously sized bottles of alcohol and a small, metal box, which when turned on fills the area with music. 

“It’s very… floral,” Poe says when Finn shows him his decorations.

He blushes, and he  _ knows  _ Poe hates it. “Sorry –” he begins.

“No, no, it’s not a bad thing,” Poe claps him on the shoulder. “It’s good.”

“Could be a metaphor,” Jess adds.

Poe points at her and nods. “True. Rebirth of the Resistance, new hope…”

“Life and colour even in the bleakest places. Yeah, shit like that,” Jess agrees, and Finn is silent, because he never put that much thought into any of it, and really just panicked and kept picking flowers, but he’ll gladly take the interpretation. 

He eats dinner with Rey and Rose, and is soon joined by Poe and Jessika. 

“We haven’t officially met,” Jessika says, extending her hand to Rey. “I’m Jessika Pava, pilot.” 

“I’m Rey,” she responds, and doesn’t make any move to reciprocate until Finn gives her a kick under the table and a meaningful look. “ _ Ow _ ,” she hisses, and then shakes Jess’ hand with extreme vigor, staring Finn in the eyes the whole time. 

“Jess is super brave and terrifying,” Finn says. “You’ll like her.”

“Wow that’s a compliment I didn’t think I’d be receiving. Thanks Finn.” 

Rey glares at Finn, and then turns to Jessika and makes a point of playfully ignoring him. “So Jessika, tell me about yourself,” Rey says.

Finn stands and moves around to the other side of the table, so he’s seated next to Poe. 

“Hey,” he whispers.

“Right back at you,” Poe responds, and shuffles closer, so their thighs are pressed together. 

“Did you actually like all the flowers? I didn’t know what I was doing and kind of panicked. I’ve never been to a party before, and have no idea what it’s meant to look like, I –” 

“Promise I did,” Poe cuts him off. “Don’t underestimate your creativity.”

He shrugs. “It was mostly an accident, though.” 

“Still a creative accident.” Poe smiles and nudges Finn’s shoulder with his own.

“They’re ridiculous,” he hears Jess say to Rey, and then she turns to them, and repeats, with a tone of disbelief, “You’re ridiculous.” 

“Maybe,” is Poe’s response.

Finn feels like he’s missing something, and looks at Poe, and then Jess, and then Rose and Rey. Jess rolls her eyes. “You’re attached at the hip, is all,” Jess says. “Don’t get me wrong: it’s cute. I love it. Continue being disgustingly cute.” 

She turns back and continues her conversation with Rey and Rose. 

Finn shuffles. He suddenly feels awkward and intrusive. “You don’t have to talk me all the time if you don’t want to,” he tells Poe.

“Trust me, I want to.”

“If you get bored –” 

Poe looks up at him through his eyelashes, and his smile makes Finn’s heart flip. “Finn, I’ll never get bored of you.” 

Finn swallows. “I’m really not that interesting,” he protests weakly.

“I could spend every day for the rest of my life with you, buddy, and I promise it still wouldn’t be enough.” As soon as he says it, Poe sighs and turns back to his dinner, brow furrowed with what Finn thinks is regret, or worry, or confusion, or maybe all three. 

“I’ll be here as long as you want me,” Finn says, and it’s quiet and he didn’t even realise how close they were sitting until he sees Poe shiver when Finn’s breath tickles his ear.

Poe closes his eyes for a moment, and before he can stop himself, Finn is letting his mind wander. He’s imagining the day the war ends, and Poe is there. He’s imagining himself living in a house on a planet with lots of green, and Poe is there. He’s imagining himself alive, and happy, and free, and Poe is there. It scares him a bit, how infinite it all feels. It scares him that thinking of any other outcome hurts, and it scares him that Poe might not always mean the promise he made, and it scares him that they might die before they get a chance to find out. 

“Then it sounds like you’re in it for the long haul,” Poe rasps.

 

***

 

The moment the sun sets, the clearing is transformed. They’ve set up a perimeter of lanterns, and a bonfire is burning in the centre. The chains of flowers seem like they’re floating, and every time Finn looks up, all he can see is colour, and life, and billions and billions of stars. Music is playing, and the style changes rapidly between songs. One minute it’ll be bouncy, rounded, and then the next it’ll be raucous and harsh. (Finn is of the understanding the Poe and Jessika have been in constant conflict about the playlist.) At any given time, there’s at least two-hundred people spread between the clearing and the mess-tent, Finn thinks, with many wandering in and out at their own leisure. 

Finn sits in the corner near Chewie, who’s grilling some sort of meat. It smells rich and salty, and makes Finn’s mouth water. Chewie bellows and looks to Finn for support when half a dozen porgs start flying at his face and biting at his ankles.

“Hey, I can’t help you,” Finn says, holding up his hands defensively. He takes a sip of his drink, and it’s sweet and fruity, and after half a cup his head spins a bit, but it feels good. Although vaguely familiar with the concept of getting drunk, it’s something that intimidates Finn. He doesn’t like the idea of losing control, and decides that the moment he feels super-weird-in-a-bad-way he’s going to stop. 

“Finn!” Rey’s voice shouts from somewhere, and then she’s running out of the crowd and grabbing him by the hands. She pulls him to his feet and they spin in a wide circle, and it makes Finn laugh. “Finn, this is  _ wonderful _ !” she exclaims. “Have you ever seen anything like this?”

“Never,” Finn agrees, and he can’t wipe the grin from his face.

“The Force wants you to come and dance,” Rey demands, and starts to drag him toward the other side of the clearing.

“That’s not how the Force works!” Finn protests, but Rey just pulls him harder. 

“Rey!” Rose shouts, and then “Finn!” with an equal level of excitement. 

People around them are moving their bodies to the music, and it looks so easy and natural, but Finn doesn’t know how to make his body do that. 

“Are you going to dance?” Rose asks him, grinning, and Finn nods, but he thinks he might be lying.

“I’m gonna just – go get another drink first,” he nods at her, and then pushes to the edge of the crowd.

He fills up his cup and just stands and watches for a while. He finishes his drink and puts the cup down, and is feeling a bit weird, but definitely in a good way, when a pair of arms wrap around his waist from behind and he hears a familiar laugh in his ear. 

“Hey, buddy,” Poe whispers, and it courses through Finn in a wave of heat.

He couldn’t stop grinning even if he wanted to, and of their own volition his hands come up to rest on top of Poe’s. “Hey.”

He lifts Poe’s hands, but only enough so that he can twist around, so they’re standing chest-to-chest, with Poe’s arms crossed behind Finn’s back. He wonders whether it’s the alcohol that’s making this feel so easy, so natural. 

“How are you?” Finn asks, and Poe is watching him with that familiar intensity and depth that always leaves Finn reeling.

“I’m better now that you’re here,” Poe says. “Are you doing okay?” His eyes wander over Finn’s features, like he’s checking for any signs of harm. “Parties can be pretty overwhelming. They’re not for everyone, so don’t feel bad if you want to leave.”

Finn shakes his head. “No! No, I don’t want to leave.”

Poe bites his lip and nods, and then his grin is mirroring Finn’s. “Come with me,” he says, and then is grabbing both of Finn’s hands and walking backwards, with Finn in tow.

Poe stops for a moment, just long enough to reach down and grab a flower off the table next to him. It’s a deep orange, with long, sloping petals, and specks of white making their way out from the centre like tiny deposits of snow. Poe tucks it behind Finn’s ear, and his grin widens even more. “Perfect,” he beams. Finn reaches up and touches it, and he’s reminded of the joke Poe and Jessika made about metaphors, and it suddenly seems far more real.

They take another few steps back, and then they’re at the edge of the dancing crowd. “I don’t think I know how to dance,” Finn tells him, but doesn’t let go of his hands.

“That’s okay,” Poe says. “We don’t have to if you don’t want to.” 

He thinks for a minute. His eyes scan the crowd, and he sees Rose and Rey, pressed close together, with Rose’s hands tight on Rey’s hips, and sees Jess moving like something possessed and singing along to the lyrics in a language Finn doesn’t recognise, and sees countless strangers laughing and smiling and moving, and decides, “I think I’d like to learn.”

“You just have to move with the music,” Poe says. “Whatever feels right.”

The song playing now is light and melodic, with a fast thrumming beat. Finn just blinks, and tries to get something to move, but doesn’t know where to start, and kind of just feels silly. 

“Here,” Poe puts a hand back on Finn’s waist. “Copy me to start,” and he’s guiding Finn’s hips from side to side. Finn closes his eyes, and he _ feels  _ the music now, and it’s more than just sound. It’s suddenly palpable, and in an instant he  _ gets it _ . 

He starts to move the rest of his body, and sees some people moving their arms, so he tries that, and sees some people jump, so he tries that too, and he can’t hold back a loud, “Woo!” 

“Poe, dancing is great!” he emphasises the statement by grabbing Poe’s waist and spinning him around. 

“I knew you’d like it,” Poe replies, and the way his body moves is transfixing. He’s languid, and lithe, and knows exactly how to move his arms, his legs, his hips along to the music. It’s like nothing Finn has ever seen before (and while he hasn’t seen a lot of dancing to begin with, he knows he could go to a thousand parties on a thousand different planets and still see nothing quite like Poe). 

He places his hands on Poe’s chest, and can feel the warmth radiating out from under his shirt. The music thrums, and Finn’s skin buzzes with heat and exultation. The world smells sweet, of flowers, and earthy, of bonfire smoke, and then he’s pulling Poe closer and it smells sharp, of the sweat on Poe’s neck. Finn wants to push, wants to touch, and he runs his hands down Poe’s sides, onto his hips, and back up, and his forehead is pressed into Poe’s shoulder. 

Poe shivers, and whispers, “ _ Finn _ ,” and his hand tightens in the fabric of Finn’s shirt.

Finn moves his head up and back, enough that he can meet Poe’s eyes. His pupils are blown wide and he looks positively frenetic. 

“Sorry,” he whispers, and Poe closes his eyes and breathes deeply.

“Don’t be sorry,” he shakes his head, and then takes another deep breath like he’s in pain and steps backwards. The moment his hands are gone Finn feels cold. “I’m gonna – I’m gonna go check on Jess,” he croaks, running a hand through his hair. 

The feeling that he did something terribly, massively wrong is unshakeable. He thinks he maybe crossed a line with the amount of touching Poe could tolerate, and wonders whether it was the alcohol, or the music, or just Finn’s bad judgement. He looks around for Rey and Rose, but can’t see them anywhere. Suddenly the music feels too loud, and the light of the bonfire is more menacing than joyful, and he wants to leave.

Without giving it too much thought, he wanders into the forest, and within moments feels a wave of calm wash over him. He keeps walking, and lets the night and the forest seep together until he reaches the edge of the lake. He sits down on the sand, and listens to the sounds emanating from the treeline, which once felt insidious and malevolent, but are now comforting, grounding.  The purple water is black under the glow of the planet’s three moons, and is speckled with starlight. The sky and the water bleed together, and become one, and they seem to stretch forever in every direction.

He’d forgotten about the flower behind his ear until he reaches up feels it brush his cheek. He lets it fall into his hand, and is instantly overcome with sadness. 

He watches the water ripple as creatures move beneath it, and wonders if they know what love is, those slimy, primeval things. He wonders whether the sky the loves the water, and if the sun loves the moon.  _ Where is the boundary between love, and the unstoppable hum of the universe _ , he wonders. _ Is it love if it’s as inevitable as the turning of night to day?  _

The flower in his hand flutters beneath the gentle breeze, and he cups it gently so it doesn’t blow away. 

He hears a rustle at the edge of the forest, but doesn’t turn around. His reason tells him he should be more vigilant, but deep inside he knows there’s no threat, not right now. The sand crunches, and Poe sits down next to him. He’s silent for a long while, and there’s only the sounds of the forest and the lake and the night. “I’m sorry,” he says, when he finally speaks.

“I should apologise,” Finn tells him, and his voice feels far too loud, like a blade cutting through the tranquil hush. “I crossed a line, with the touching. Sorry I made you uncomfortable.” 

“No!” Poe sounds genuinely surprised, and even he winces slightly at the volume of the protest. “Finn, no, that’s not it. I – I don’t mind. I’m completely into it,” his voice is closer to a whisper, now.

Finn frowns. “Then why –” 

“You’ve been drinking,” Poe explains. “I didn’t want you doing things that you’d regret.” 

Finn turns his head and meets Poe’s gaze. “Firstly, I’m not even drunk. And secondly, I’ll never regret anything with you, Poe.”

He grabs Poe’s hand, and runs his thumb over the backs of his knuckles. It’s silent again, and the sounds of the night are taking over when Poe shifts closer. Finn reaches up, and lets his fingers drift through Poe’s curls for a moment, before sliding the orange flower behind his ear, like Poe had done before. “I want you to have this,” Finn murmurs. “Orange is your colour.” 

Poe gazes at him with a look so filled with things Finn can’t bring himself to diagnose ( _ tenderness, contentment, rapture _ ). His brows are furrowed, and his hair glows like a halo in the silver of the moonlight. “There’s so many things I want to say to you right now, Finn,” he says, and Finn isn’t sure what those things are, and doesn’t know if he’s ready to find out. 

“Say one of them,” he settles on. 

Poe shifts, and now his hand is on Finn’s back, fingers running in gentle circles across his spine. “Would it be okay if I called you beautiful?” Poe asks. It’s so soft that Finn could have almost mistaken it for the rustle of the breeze.

Finn nods, and it doesn’t feel like he’s in control of his movements, not fully. 

“You’re beautiful,” Poe whispers.

Finn doesn’t respond. Not with words, anyway. He lets his hand drift up to Poe’s face and thinks,  _ this is okay, this is okay _ , and brushes his thumb over the sharp arch of his cheekbone. His other hand bunches in Poe’s shirt, and he presses their foreheads together, and it’s gentle and urgent all at once,

He closes his eyes, and feels Poe’s breath, warm against his face, and feels his hand, cupping the back of his neck, and he thinks about inevitability. 

_ Where is the boundary between love, and the unstoppable hum of the universe? _

He loves Poe, and he feels it in every beat of his heart and every splash of the waves on the shore. But it feels bigger than that, unstoppable, in a way that makes Finn think of a star being born, of atoms and cosmic gas coming together to form something bright, and new, and beautiful. He thinks of that star becoming a sun, and of that sun rising, and as it rises it warms Finn’s skin, and that moment is nothing compared to the magnificence of  _ this _ .

_ Is it love if it’s as inevitable as the turning of night to day?  _

Finn feels his love for Poe burned into the fabric of the universe, and thinks it was probably there since the beginning of time, just waiting for him to come to life and find it. It feels inevitable, this thing between them (this thing that Finn can’t name, and can only feel the vague enormity of). It feels inevitable in the way of a sunrise, and he decides that if the sky can love the water (which he thinks it can), and if the moon can love the sun (which he thinks it must), then he can love Poe with all the force of the universe behind him (and so he does).

 

***

 

They walk back to base in relative silence, and Finn is grateful for Poe’s hand in his, keeping him tethered to the ground. He feels like if he lets go, he could float away, and exist forever as a speck of light in the dusty black of the sky. 

When they reach their cave, Finn doesn’t want to let go of Poe’s hand, and considers asking him to sleep next to him, like they did on Escion VII, and again in the Millenium Falcon. But he feels pulled too tight, and too full of too many emotions, and like if he lets himself fall asleep next to Poe tonight, the universe might crack in two.

They get ready for bed in silence, with only a quick exchange of  _ goodnight _ , and a final brush of hands that makes Finn’s chest want to burst. It’s quiet and heavy, the minerals in the rock are like gold and silver stars, and he can hear Poe’s breath from across the room. 

He makes a choice, in that second. He makes a choice, that if he doesn’t say it now, he never will, because he’ll push the emotions back down, to where he doesn’t have to think about them, and he won’t be protected by the blanket of night and the pull of inevitability that he knows Poe must feel too.

“I love you,” Finn whispers into the glittering darkness.

A long moment passes, and Finn’s heart feels stock-still, like it’s preparing to break. “I know,” comes Poe’s voice from across the cave, a low and rough croak.

Finn feels unsatisfied, and perhaps it’s his tiredness, or perhaps it’s something bigger that makes him abandon his better judgement and ask, “Do you love me?”

He hears Poe’s breath catch, and listens for a moment while it evens out. Finally, Poe says, “Yeah, Finn. I love you, buddy. I love you.”

It hurts more than he expected it to, and he doesn’t know why.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _They move together, in that space between the moon and the sun._

(v)

 

There are lots of things Finn missed out on, growing up the way he did. 

One of them is taste.

The foods the Resistance serve are so full of spices and flavours; so far from the protein bars and bland, grey soups of the First Order. He thinks of the first time he drank caf, and how the bitterness shocked him, and Rey rolled her eyes and passed him a cube of sugar, and how after that the richness had rolled across his tongue and made his blood buzz. He asks Poe what his favourite taste is, and the answer is vanilla.  _ I know it’s the definition of boring _ , Poe says, and Finn shakes his head, and admits that he doesn’t know what vanilla is, and so can’t pass any judgement on that. So far, Finn’s favourite taste has been this soup they served in the mess tent one night, that contained noodles, and meat, and vegetables, and more different spices than Finn thinks he’ll ever be able to name. 

One of them is sound.

Music, and nature, and the soft background hum of casual conversation – those are all things that he thinks people probably take for granted. He grew up listening to the hum of machinery, and the clomp of heavy boots against metal floors, and loud breathing behind Stormtrooper masks. Laughter, too. Laughter had never been a very good thing, before Finn escaped. It had meant evil, it had meant sadism, it had meant a superior officer taking joy in the suffering of a trainee. Now, his favourite sound is laughter. Rey’s laughter, Poe’s laughter, his own laughter. And where the sound of a laugh used to scare him ( _ they could come for you next _ , his reason told him), there’s now nothing better.

One of them is smell.

He can’t pick a favourite smell, the way he can’t pick a favourite taste. It’s the damp earth after rain. It’s freshly cut wood. It’s that smell that is just uniquely  _ Poe _ , that overcomes him every time they’re close, or every time Finn presses his nose into the collar of the jacket they share.

One of them is touch.

Stormtroopers don’t touch.

Stormtroopers don’t touch unless it’s violent, or clinical, or filled with desperation and danger, hands reaching between bunks, and holding on as long as they dare risk (which was never very long). If he could, he would spend every minute of every day holding someone’s hand. He loves hugging Rey, and it always makes him feel a gentle warmth, somewhere high in his chest. He loves hugging Poe, and it always makes him feel a sharp heat, somewhere deep in his belly. It feels so different from the way he wants to touch everyone else. Where elsewhere, he seeks a gentle comfort, and a vague warmth, with Poe he wants that _and_ _more_. He wants to run his hands over every inch of Poe, and have him return the gesture. He thinks about touching with more than just his hands, of letting his lips glide across Poe’s cheek, and of his chest pressed against Poe’s back, and the heat only intensifies. He also thinks of holding Poe’s hand, and their legs lightly brushing under the table, and Poe’s hair tickling his neck as he buries his head in Finn’s shoulder and laughs, and the heat spreads upwards, and prickles outwards, and his whole body feels electric.

He doesn’t know when him and Poe had first fallen into the rhythm of casual touching, but now it’s not out of place for Poe’s hand to rest unconcernedly on the small of his back, and for Finn to grab his hand when they’re in the middle of conversation. They sit by the edge of the forest, and Poe is telling him about the ring he wears on a chain around his neck ( _ it was my mother’s _ , he explains,  _ and it reminds me that you can still keep loving, even during war _ ), and Finn is gently tracing the lines of his palm. He trails his fingers up Poe’s wrist, and then back down and entwines their fingers. ( _ All I’ve ever known is war, _ Finn admits.) Poe leans his shoulder harder against Finn’s. ( _ And that makes you amazing, Finn _ , Poe says,  _ that you’ve spent your life with nothing, but still manage to love better than most people who never had a damn thing happen to them _ .) Finn rests his head on Poe’s shoulder. ( _ Guess I’m just awesome _ , he jokes.) Poe sighs, and Finn feels it deep in his own body, the movement coursing through him from every point their bodies touch. ( _ No doubt about it, buddy _ , he hums). 

( _ I love you,  _ Finn says, because he’s addicted now, to the words and the feeling he gets when he says them.)

( _ I love you too _ , Poe responds easily, and really, it’s this part that he craves above all else.)

 

***

 

“Damn, I miss my X-Wing,” Poe says, staring up at the E-Wing in front of him on the runway.

BB-8 lets out a despondent beep of agreement. They’d had to do alterations on the ship to make it compatible with BB-8, it being, as Poe put it,  _ a piece of shit only built for R7 droids _ . 

“It could be worse,” Finn shrugs, looking over at the battered and ancient Geonosian starfighter to their left.

“Still miss my X-Wing.” 

General Organa has assigned Poe a new squadron, consisting of Jessika and six others, two of which are pilots who escaped the Resistance carrier with them, and four of which are people Jessika found operating in the underground Rebel network. They’re getting ready to fly out for a mission that’s meant to last four days. The aim is to destroy a First Order carrier found hovering over an inhabited planet in the Charth System.

(“They’re definitely planning an attack,” Finn had said, with absolute confidence. “We need to do something about it. They’ll invade the planet in one massive wave, and kill all the civilians, and take the children, the ones who are young enough to put into the Trooper program. They won’t leave anyone behind.”

“Why now?” the General had asked. 

“It’s a statement,” Finn had replied. “They want us to know that they’ll always have the power to kill who they want. And that they have no shortage of troops, because no matter how many we take out, they can always get  _ more _ .” 

He hadn’t realised how fast his breathing had gotten until Poe placed a hand on shoulder and said, “Breathe, Finn.”

Poe had turned to General Organa. “Finn’s right. We can’t let them kidnap thousands of children and murder their families just to make a statement.”

Finn had wanted to go along, and Poe had wanted to fly out right away. General Organa had taken them both aside. “I don’t want to patronise either of you with a lecture about chain of command and strategy,” she had said. “And I don’t want to tell you to curb your passion, because it’s passion that keeps the Resistance alive.  _ But _ ,” she continued, “I want you to think before you act. Both of you.”

And so it’d been decided they’d fly out the following morning, and that instead of being an all-out assault, a small squadron would approach furtively, and take out the ship before the First Order had time to respond.) 

“Hey, BB, could you give me and Finn a moment?” Poe asks, turning to face Finn, and Finn feels like BB-8 is managing to glare at them both at it rolls away. 

“Promise you’ll be careful,” Finn pleads, grasping Poe’s elbows and meeting his eyes.

“I’ll be as careful as I can,” he responds, and it’s not satisfying. Finn wants Poe to stay away from all danger, forever, as unrealistic as he knows that is. It’s a war. They’re soldiers. This is what soldiers do. 

“I wish I was coming with you.” He knows it’s dumb, because realistically there is no way that his presence would be able to protect Poe. He can’t throw himself in front of cannon fire, not this time, not when they’re being shot at from a carrier ship. (And he knows Poe wouldn’t want him to, anyway. Not that that would stop him from doing it). 

Poe nods. “I know. I know. But you’ve gotta – we’ve  _ both _ gotta listen to the General. No matter what happens, don’t come looking for me. Don’t try and save me.”  

Finn’s stomach drops. “I can’t make that promise. Just come back.” 

“I will,” he says, and they both know that it could be a lie. “I –” Poe hesitates after a moment. “I’ll tell you what. Look after this for me, while I’m gone,” he says, unzipping his jumpsuit enough to slide the chain holding his mother’s ring off from around his neck. “That way you know I’ll be back to collect it.” 

Finn shakes his head. “I can’t – I can’t take that, Poe. It’s the most special thing you own.” 

“That’s how you know I’ll be back,” Poe reiterates. He slips the chain around Finn’s neck, and it feels weighted with meaning. 

“Dameron, kiss your boy goodbye, and be ready for take-off in five!” Jessika shouts from across the landing strip, climbing into her own battered A-Wing. 

Finn makes a conscious decision to ignore Jessika’s teasing (and also makes a conscious decision not to think about whether he wants Poe to kiss him, because he thinks he probably knows what the answer will be, and it scares him). He hugs Poe tighter than he maybe ever has, and Poe holds him with the same fierceness. “I love you,” Finn whispers, and, “Please come home.”

“I love you,” Poe responds, and he presses his forehead against Finn’s for a brief moment, and closes his eyes like he’s trying to commit this moment to memory. He steps away, and gives Finn’s hand a final squeeze before jogging towards his E-Wing. He shoots Finn one last look before putting his helmet on, and climbing into the cockpit, and blasting off into the sky. 

Finn holds the ring around his neck tightly in his hand, and forces himself to picture Poe, unscathed, and returning home.

 

***

 

(For not the first time, he considers the concept of  _ home _ . It once felt completely foreign to him, and he still doesn’t feel like he has a complete grasp on the concept, but… it’s no longer something that seems unattainable.  _ Come home _ , he had said to Poe, and didn’t even consider what it had meant at the time. To Poe, it had probably been simple, synonymous with  _ come back _ . But Finn can feel the weight of the words, and the weight of Poe’s ring around his neck, and the weight of his own self-doubt, screaming  _ what did you do to deserve to be loved by him? _

_ Come home _ , he had said, and he isn’t sure what it means, and he just knows that it feels right.

_ His name is Finn, he’s with the Resistance, there are people in the galaxy who he loves, his best friend is Rey, he’d be happy with a cute girlfriend or a cute boyfriend, he likes to knit, and he would give his heart and his soul and his being for Poe to come home to him. _ )

 

***

 

“I’ve been thinking,” Finn starts, when he’s sitting with Rey later that day.

“How unusual,” she quips, and he playfully swats at her.

“ _ I’ve been thinking _ ,” he says again, “about different kinds of love.” 

Rey nods, and admits, “That’s something I’ve thought about, too.” 

“People fall in love, during war, yeah?” Finn continues. “Of course people love each other, but … they  _ fall in love _ ? In the way that’s different from how we love each other.”

“I don’t think there’s any doubt about it,” Rey replies, and she suddenly seems absent. Finn follows her gaze and sees her watching Rose, who’s in the process of working on the engine of a ship.

Finn would be lying if he said he hadn’t been curious for a while, about Rey and Rose, and what happened when he and Poe were on the mission to Escion. “Do you think you’d be able to have a boyfriend while the war is still happening?” Finn asks, and then more carefully: “Or a girlfriend?”

“I think… I think I’ll probably only ever want a girlfriend,” she says quietly, shrinking in on herself, like she can will the Force to make to disappear. “I think… I think I’m probably gay, Finn.”

Finn grabs her hand. “Me too. At least, a bit. I don’t think gender really… bothers me? Also,” he continues when she looks up at him, “Poe is gay. Which means none of us are straight, and  _ how  _ did that happen?” he realises. “Huh.”

“Perhaps we’re all just smart,” Rey responds. “But Poe, huh?” she asks, and Finn can hear the density in the question. 

“Yup, likes boys,” he confirms, suddenly feeling very flustered. “And I like boys. Works out pretty well. Not that – I don’t think I’m his type, at all,” Finn says, and he hates it, because he doesn’t  _ care _ , he doesn’t  _ care  _ what Poe’s type is. “And besides, it’s not like that,” he clarifies.

“You’re not in love with Poe?” Rey asks, and it’s a mixture of incredulity and surprise.

Finn opens his mouth, and his brain responds with  _ no, of course not _ , but what comes out of his mouth is. “I –” followed by a series of stuttering, incomprehensible syllables. 

“I think I might be in love with Rose,” Rey whispers, and it’s so quiet Finn almost misses it. 

“That makes sense,” he says, because it does. If Rey were going to be in love with anyone, he’s glad it’s Rose, because he trusts her, and he loves her.

“Hypothetically,” she prompts, and Finn gets the feeling that whatever she says is going to be anything but hypothetical, “if you were in love with Poe, that would be okay.”

“Hypothetically,” he replies, “if I were in love with Poe, it might… scare me a bit. If I were in love with him – hypothetically – how would I know if he loves me in the same way? I know he loves me, he says it all the time, but how do I know that he feels the same? And if he does, what do I do then? I don’t want to mess it up and lose him.” He realises, too late, that he’s stopped talking in terms of  _ what if _ , and hopes Rey doesn’t notice. 

“Hypothetically, anyone who’s been around you boys for even a second could confirm that of course Poe is in love with you.” 

Finn closes his eyes and sighs, and pulls the chain with Poe’s ring out from under his shirt and concentrates on the feeling of the metal against his palm. 

“Is that Poe’s ring?” Rey marvels.

Finn nods. 

“Oh, Finn,” she says, and he hates how sad she sounds.

 

***

 

They lose comms with Poe’s squadron on the third day. Finn feels his heart shatter the moment they try and radio in and get nothing but static. 

He’s on the landing strip, fully ready to hop in a ship that he doesn’t know how to fly and go after Poe, with no plan, and no backup, and no authorisation, when General Organa steps up next to him, and he doesn’t know how she gets around so quietly. It must be a Force thing, he thinks. 

He jumps. “General Organa! Hi. I was just… hanging out. Here. On the landing strip. Like I always do. Nothing weird,” he winces at how terrible the lie is. 

She shakes her head and smiles slightly at the ridiculousness. “I know it’s hard, Finn,” she says. “Waiting for them to come home. But sometimes you have to just wait, and trust that they know what they’re doing.” 

“General –” he starts, and she cuts him off.

“Call me Leia, Finn.” 

A small part of him is freaking out about being on a first-name basis with  _ the  _ Leia Organa, but mostly he’s just freaking out about a thousand other things. “What if he needs help?” he pleads.

“Poe is one of the best pilots I’ve ever seen. In fact, I think he probably could’ve given Luke a run for his money, Jedi or not. You need to trust him, Finn.” 

“I do,” Finn whispers. “But it doesn’t feel like enough.” 

“I know,” she responds, and the understanding in her eyes makes it almost easier to think of her as  _ Leia  _ instead of  _ General Organa _ . “Walk with me, Finn,” she says, and is wandering in the direction of the main base before he has time to respond, and he doesn’t really have a choice but to jog after her. 

They walk in silence for a moment, and then Finn asks something that he’s acutely aware is crossing a line, and it might get him demoted or even beaten (but then he remembers that the Resistance doesn’t  _ do that _ ), and it’s this: “When you fell in love with Han,” he asks. “Did it scare you.”

She looks at him out of the corner of her eye, and purses her lips. “Yes,” she responds after a minute. “Either of us could have died at any second. And I was so young – younger than you are, Finn.” That’s something he’d never thought about before. In his head, the General has just always been this way, and he can’t imagine her being young and confused, and anything other than wise. “I think you’d have to be insane  _ not  _ to be scared.” 

“Do you think –” he hesitates. “Do you think that’s why it didn’t last? You and Han. Because of how you got together?” 

She shakes her head. “No. I think if anything, it made us stronger. And it did last – for a long time, precisely until the moment it didn’t.” She sighs wistfully. “And even then, I never stopped loving him.”

Finn nods, and of its own volition his hand reaches up to grasp Poe’s ring. “That’s not to say you’re not an idiot for falling in love while we’re at war,” Leia says. “But part of being human is constant, unshakeable  _ stupidity _ .” 

“How did you stop being scared?” he asks.

“I didn’t. That’s another part of being human.” 

“And was it worth it?”  _ Was it worth it _ , he thinks,  _ loving him so much that it hurts a bit, and scares you a lot, when you think about how you don’t want it to ever end _ . 

“I think you know it was.”

 

***

 

Poe’s squadron arrive home a day later than they were meant to. They’d been pursued by a single TIE-fighter, and had to hide out on a nearby moon until it started to run out of fuel, at which point they’d been able to shoot it down. They’d gone dark on comms in case the TIE-fighter managed to pinpoint their location and call for backup before they could stage the ambush. Apart from that, the mission went perfectly. 

Finn is hugging Poe the moment he steps out of his ship. His flight suit is dirty, and he smells like he hasn’t washed in a week (which he  _ hasn’t _ ), but Finn doesn’t care. He doesn’t realise that he’s crying, until Poe whispers, “Hey,  _ hey _ , it’s okay. I came home, Finn. I came home.” 

Stormtroopers don’t cry, but he isn’t a Stormtrooper, and so he holds Poe and sobs, and Poe doesn’t let go. He doesn’t know why he’s crying, except that it all feels like too much, and like he’s boiling over, and like he doesn’t know how to properly feel all the things that he feels. 

When there’s no more tears left, he doesn’t say sorry (because he knows Poe will say  _ don’t apologise, it’s okay _ , and he’ll mean it like he always does), and instead just grabs Poe’s face and rests their foreheads together, and it was only five days, but the worry makes the time feel stretched and distorted, like eternities passed every time Finn closed his eyes. 

“I missed you,” he whispers, and it’s perhaps the biggest understatement in the universe. 

“I love you, Finn,” Poe says, and his hand comes up to cup the side of Finn’s face. “And I came home.” 

That night, after Poe has washed and eaten and debriefed the General, they settle down to sleep. Finn curls up next to Poe, and Poe wraps his arms around his chest until Finn stops shaking. He grabs Finn’s hand, and his fingers trace gentle circles on his palm, and gradually,  _ gradually _ , he starts to feel okay. 

“I don’t know why this mission got to me so much,” Finn whispers. 

It’s only half the truth, because if he really thinks about it, he can form a relatively solid hypothesis. This mission got to him because it was exactly the way the First Order would have stolen him, if he was stolen (which is heart says he  _ was _ ) and it reminded him with astonishing urgency of the fact that his family, if they ever existed, were murdered by the people who caged him for the rest of his life (until the moment he broke free). This mission got to him, because the possibility of losing Poe felt far too real, perhaps even more real than when he’d been shot on Escion VII, because if Poe’s ship went down while his comms were dark, Finn would never know. He’d spend the rest of his life not knowing how Poe died, and they’d never be able to retrieve his body, and he’d always be quietly hoping that  _ maybe  _ he was still out there, and it’d tear him apart. 

“I’m gonna burn them down, Finn,” Poe says in place of a direct response. “I’m not gonna stop until the First Order are dust.” 

“And what then?” he asks, staring into the darkness of their room, and trying to focus on the warmth of Poe’s body under the blankets. 

“I don’t know,” Poe admits. “But we’ll work it out.”

Moments pass, and then Finn says, “When we first met, I said the reason I was saving you was that it was the right thing to do.” He doesn’t know why this occurred to him now, but it’s too important not to say. “That was only half true. Mostly, I just wanted to get out. I was thinking about myself. I didn’t care who you were or that you were with the Resistance.” 

Poe hums in thought. “I know that, and it’s not a problem, Finn. I don’t expect you to have cared about me the moment we met. That – that’s not how people are.”

“No,” Finn says, because Poe missed the point. “That’s not it. The problem is that now,” he takes a deep breath. “Now I think I probably care too much. I’m worried that I care so much – about you, Poe. I care about you – that I’ll be just as selfish as before, because  _ I  _ don’t want to lose you. I’ll make the wrong choices, because I love you so much Poe, and I’ll  _ trick _ myself into believing that something is the  _ right thing to do _ when really – when really it’s just as selfish as before,” he repeats. He doesn’t know if he’s making any sense. “Leaving the First Order – that was the right choice. But what if next time, it isn’t.” 

“We both have that problem,” Poe mutters, after a long pause. “And I’m gonna remind you what you said to me. Being wrong is part of being a person. And you’re a person, Finn, you always were, no matter what those bastards made you think.” 

“I shouldn’t be  _ selfish _ –” he starts, thinking for the millionth time of how important it is to do things because they’re part of the bigger picture, and how no moment exists in isolation, and how hard it is to let go of the feeling that all that matters is his direct orbit. 

“Be selfish,” Poe whispers. “Be a bit selfish, sometimes. People are selfish.” Poe’s curls tickle the back of Finn’s neck. “The way I love you is selfish, Finn. If I were a better soldier, I’d only care about the cause, but that’s what makes us different from  _ them _ . We’re people. And we’re selfish. And we make mistakes. And we love.” 

It’s Poe’s nightmares that wake him that night, and Finn holds him until the haunted look leaves his eyes. “You’re home,” Finn reminds him as he strokes his spine. “I love you, and you’re home. You’re here, and you’re safe, and I love you.” 

( _ I’m in love with you _ , the uncontrollable parts of Finn scream, but the distinction is too much, and there’s the equally uncontrollable parts of him that shout,  _ You don’t know how you love him. Love like this is unknowable _ .)

 

***

 

They sleep together the next night, and the one after that, and the one after that, and every night for the next two weeks, and Finn sleeps better than he ever has in his life. When he wakes up, he lets himself cry, because there’s no one here to punish him, to mock his weakness, to remind him that he isn’t human, he’s a Stormtrooper. Instead, there’s just Poe, who holds him, and says  _ I love you _ and  _ you’re home _ and  _ you’re a person _ .

(And one night, when Finn has almost drifted back to sleep, he feels Poe press a kiss to his temple, in between the  _ I love you  _ and the  _ you’re home _ . It’s so soft that he wonders if he dreamt it, and a quiet part of him hopes beyond all else that it was real.)

 

***

 

“I want to show you something,” Poe tells him, after a month of nights like that. Life has been continuing as normal, with the gears of war still and forever turning in the background. Finn can’t shake the feeling that the days are numbered, like surely this is the calm before the storm, that those halcyonic moments are but a blip in a much grander narrative, one that isn’t calm or gentle in the least. 

It’s late afternoon, and Poe leads him to the landing strip. “Don’t worry,” he says when Finn expresses concern about whether this is  _ allowed _ . “I got permission to use a ship for leisure. Although stealing a ship just to take you out is definitely something I’d do, Finn.” He winks. “Maybe I’ll add it to the bucket list.” 

Finn straps into the passenger seat of a compact two-person transporter. “Where are we going?” he asks, and while he appreciates the  _ concept _ of a surprise, the ambiguity makes him anxious. 

“I want to show you one of the most beautiful things in the galaxy,” Poe respond obscurely, as he pilots them down the runway. They shoot into the sky, and Poe levels them out before pushing up above the clouds. The moment he does, Finn thinks he understands why he’s here. “Have you ever seen a sunset from the sky before?” Poe asks, and it takes a long moment for Finn to process the words and shake his head.

The clouds spread out beneath them like a landscape of infinite, rolling hills, cast in shades of purple and pink and orange. Above them, the sky is a dark, rich azure, and he can see the first pockets of stars bursting into view. Poe dips the ship below the cloudline, and Finn is momentarily blinded, and then the world spreads forth, glittering with a universe worth of colour. He sees their base, carved into the mountain, and it’s miniature from this high up, and sees where it gives way to the forest, which gives way to the beach, which gives way to the vast expanse of purple water, and the scale of things takes his breath away. The sun reflects in lengths of gold across the surface of the lake, and the forest stretches forever, up the mountains, and down into the curving canyons, all bathed in soft magenta. As they switch languidly between above and below the clouds, Finn feels as if they’re  _ part of _ the sunset, rather than observers. They move together, in that space between the moon and the sun. 

Just for a moment, Poe lets go of the controls and grabs Finn’s hand, and they go into freefall, and it’s exhilarating. Poe is cast in blankets of orange as they plummet, and in that second Finn wants nothing more than to reach out, and kiss him, and never let go. But then, Poe’s hands are back on the controls, and they’re soaring upwards, and Finn can’t hold back a loud cheer. 

He's unsure how long they stay like that, because time suddenly feels like something for other people to worry about, but when Poe pilots them gently onto the flat top a mountain, the world is touched with a periwinkle haze. 

Finn feels giddy, and stumbles when he climbs out of the ship. “Thank you,” he whispers, and Poe’s smile is soft and warm and full of  _ something _ . (And the  _ something  _ is love, Finn knows, with almost absolute certainty.) 

The moons are faint above them, and the sun is halfway to set when he pulls Poe close to him and presses their foreheads together. 

“I love you, so, so much,” Poe breathes. “Finn, I feel like it’s crushing me, I love you so much.” 

“I love you,” Finn says. He has one hand knotted in Poe’s hair, and the other on his hip, and he barely has to move to lay a kiss to the tip of Poe’s nose. Poe sighs, and Finn lets his lip wander to his cheekbone, and his jaw, and every moment feels more alive than that before it. It’s not hard to shift, ever so slightly, and press his lips against Poe’s. It’s brief, barely a brush, but when Finn pulls back, Poe chases his mouth and kisses him again, and this time it’s deeper. Poe’s hands are gentle against the back of his neck, and he pulls away for a second and asks,  _ is this okay _ , and waits for Finn to nod before kissing him again. 

Kissing Poe is like every good thing in the galaxy, multiplied by ten, and happening all at once. It’s the sounds of life, and the smell of rain, and the feeling of sun against his skin. It’s coming to life, and seeing in colour, and hurtling through the void at the speed of light and knowing that at the other end is home. 

Finn kisses Poe until the night falls, and then he pulls away, and lays his forehead on Poe’s shoulder, and breathes, and thinks, and lets his heart break.

 

***

 

Finn is a person. 

Finn is a person, but he’s not sure that he’s very good at it yet. He wants to be selfish. He wants to stay in the rift between night and day with Poe, forever. He wants to be selfish, but he knows it’s not the right thing to do. 

He loves Poe, and is most probably  _ in love _ with Poe, and he knows that there’s no way he can give what he  _ needs to give _ to the war, to the Resistance, to the galaxy, if things are like this. He knows that if he decides now, that the way he loves Poe  _ is _ as infinite and inevitable as it seems, it’ll be the unifying force behind every moment from now until the end of the world.

Finn is a person, and he knows people have to make hard choices. He knows that part of being alive is looking at what you want, and then looking at what the universe needs, and sometimes making a judgement that breaks your heart. 

Finn is a person, and he loves Poe, but he can’t love him in the way that he thinks he probably  _ wants to  _ love him, not yet. He can’t love him that way while there’s still the part of him that says,  _ are you worthy _ , that says,  _ can you love if you can’t define _ , that says,  _ I’m not ready to face how infinite this is _ . 

He loves Poe, and he asks himself  _ how do you love Poe? _ While the answer feels bright, and warm, and like the colour orange, where it was once was a tangle that made his head hurt and heart sting, the answer is still  _ I don’t know, not for sure _ . 

Finn is a person, Finn is a person, Finn is a person, and he loves, and he makes mistakes, and he hurts, and he  _ loves _ .

 

***

 

The sky is dark  and the moons are bright when Finn takes a step backwards, and lets his hands fall by his sides. 

“Finn, are you okay?” Poe asks, and Finn can’t bring himself to protest when Poe lays his hands gently on his forearms. 

“I don’t think I can –” Finn starts, and doesn’t really know how to finish. There’s so much he can’t do, so much he  _ wants  _ to do.

It’s a long, quiet moment, before Poe nods and let's go, and takes a step back. He runs a hand through his hair and won’t meet Finn’s eyes. “That’s fine, buddy,” he whispers, but his voice is sad, and Finn thinks something might be shattering inside him.

He wants to make Poe understand everything, but barely understands it himself, and it hurts so much, standing there, and knowing that he just rent the universe in two.

“Just not – not  _ yet _ ,” he tries to explain. “I love you, so much, but I love the Resistance too. And I don’t know if I can love the Resistance as much as I  _ need to  _ if I’m loving you in the way I  _ want to  _ at the same time.”

Poe bites his lip, and nods, and Finn knows that he, of all people, understands. “I know,” he says.

“I need to think about the way I love you,” Finn continues, and he knows it isn’t helping things. “I don’t know yet.” 

(But he thinks that when it’s time, knowing won’t be hard, and it’ll just be a matter of deciding, yes,  _ I’m not scared anymore _ .)

“I know,” Poe says again, and Finn isn’t sure whether it’s an  _ I know what you mean  _ or an  _ I know exactly how  _ I _ love you _ , and he thinks it might be both.

 

***

 

He knows what it is to be Stormtrooper, and he knows what it is to be a person, and he definitely likes the second one far more. But he has to be a person that he’s happy with, and as much as it agonises him (as much as it makes his bones ache, and his chest feel on fire) he knows he’s made the right choice. He knows that otherwise, there’d always be that part of him – that loathsome, insidious part, overflowing with indecision – that would constantly whisper words of doubt in the back of his brain. 

They still sleep together, because anything less would be too painful, at this point. Poe is quiet, and withdrawn, and even though Finn knows it has to happen the way it did, his heart breaks a thousand times over. That night, Finn doesn’t say  _ I love you _ , and he doesn’t say it for the next week, because it wouldn’t be fair on Poe. It wouldn’t be fair on either of them. Finn tells himself that things are normal, but he sees the way Poe carefully considers and asks  _ is this okay?  _ before initiating any physical contact. He sees the way Poe watches him, when he thinks he isn’t looking, all full of sadness and confusion (and understanding, which is maybe the worst of all. Part of Finn wishes Poe weren’t so damn  _ good _ . He wishes he were angry, or felt betrayed, or entitled, but that isn’t Poe. If it were, he wouldn’t love him. Instead, he has Poe, always trying his best to understand Finn; Poe, who would never put his own happiness first.) 

He wants to say  _ wait for me _ . He wants to say  _ I’ll get there one day, and be everything you want me to be, and it’ll be because I want that too _ . He wants to say  _ don’t stop loving me, please _ .

 

***

 

_ His name is Finn, he’s with the Resistance, there are people in the galaxy who he loves, his best friend is Rey, he’d be happy with a cute girlfriend or a cute boyfriend, he likes to knit, and he loves so deeply, and fears so intensely, and feels so fully, completely, imperfectly human. _

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Standing there, wearing Poe’s jacket, and Poe’s ring, and the cumulative weight of every interaction since the moment they met._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to reiterate the warnings given at the beginning of this fic for violence, gore, and PTSD. This chapter contains a brief but graphic depiction of war crimes, so if this is something that may affect you, proceed with caution. If you want more specific details so you can make an educated decision about whether to skip the relevant scene, feel free to [message me](http://poe-dmrn.tumblr.com), and I'll do my best to help you out.

(vi)

 

The lull in the war ends with a striking suddenness. They get word of a First Order carrier in the Xiurus system, hovering over the planet Yarrala, but this time it’s too late. 

“It doesn’t seem like there’s anyone left,” says the frantic voice of a pilot through a crackling and shaking holo. She flickers into a series of horizontal blue lines, and the rest of the audio is incomprehensible, except for a few, fragmented words ( _ Stormtroopers _ and  _ Ren  _ and  _ not gonna make it _ ). The recording is less than fifteen seconds in total.

It’s instant, the way everyone snaps into gear, and accepts their missions, and recognises that they might not ever return to Chyria again. 

Finn is being sent to Yarrala to help check for survivors (there won’t be any, he knows that now). Rey is coming too, because she’s almost certain that Kylo Ren will be there, waiting for them. The frequency with which they’ve been talking via the Force has decreased drastically since Luke died, being in part due to how hard Rey has been focusing on blocking him out. 

(It’s in the strategy room, after they view the holo that Rey’s eyes go absent, and she starts talking to thin air. 

“I’ll make you pay,” she hisses, followed by a stretch of silence, in which Rey’s face twists into a disgusted scowl and she takes a menacing step forward. “You’ll do no such thing. The difference between us,  _ Kylo _ ,” she spits his name like it’s made of acid. “Is that I felt the Force and didn’t think of it as something to be  _ used _ to hurt, and destroy and manipulate. You’re irredeemable, and I look forward to  _ ending  _ you.” 

She comes back to reality just as rapidly as she left, and her and General Organa share a sad look of understanding.)

There’s twenty of them going to the planet, and if Kylo Ren isn’t there, then Rey, Finn and Rose are going to leave and hunt him down. The last part is on a purely need-to-know basis, with the only people who  _ need-to-know  _ being the three of them, General Organa, and the Commander of the general search-and-rescue mission.

Poe’s squadron is being sent to pursue the First Order carrier across the galaxy, and Jessika is promoted to Captain and assigned her own squadron, who’ll follow covertly and only make themselves known if Poe needs back up. Which it’s predicted they  _ definitely  _ will. 

The next few hours are chaotic, and everywhere Finn turns people are packing supplies, and readying ships for take-off, and hugging goodbye to people they might never see again. He’s busy too, and then it suddenly hits him that he’s running out of time, and he sprints to the landing strip, physically colliding with Poe, who’d been walking in the opposite direction.

“Finn, I was just coming to find you,” Poe says. “I’m flying out in ten, and I –”

“Poe,” he cuts him off, and wraps him in a hug, and tries to convince himself that it doesn’t hurt.

Poe hugs him back, and it lasts for a long time, and Finn tries to memorise his smell, and the way his hands feel, and the exact way his voice sounds when he says  _ Finn _ . (And tries to bring to mind the feeling of his lips, and the way his voice sounded when he said  _ I love you _ .)

They pull back, and Finn thinks he probably should be saying something, but no words come to mind.

“I’ll… see you around,” Poe chokes, and then cringes at how ridiculously impersonal it sounds.

He doesn’t know what to say, and so settles on a weak, “Yeah.”

Poe closes his eyes, and grabs the back of Finn’s neck, and for the first time in days doesn’t ask  _ is this okay?  _ (And it is okay. It was never anything other than okay). 

“Be careful,” he says. 

Finn swallows. “Same goes for you.” 

He opens his eyes and meets Finn’s gaze, and he looks somber, and pensive. “I’ll always be here for you, Finn, in whatever way you want. I don’t have all the answers, but please trust me, buddy, when I say that there’s things worth holding onto hope for. Even if you don’t –” he bites his lip and appears to rethink what he was going to say. “There’s lots of people who love you,” is what he settles on. 

They stand like that for a moment, and Finn opens his mouth to say something ( _ anything  _ really) but all that comes out is, “I–” and then he feels like his throat is constricting around the words.

“You don’t have to say it,” Poe shakes his head. “I know, Finn. Me too.”

(And it’s not the same. It’s not the same as the easy exchange of  _ I love you  _ and  _ I love you, too  _ that they’d fallen into. But it’s something. And it’s still enough to make Finn’s heart feel ready to explode.)

Poe takes a step back, and just  _ looks  _ at Finn for a bit (and it feels far too much like the gaze of someone who knows they won’t be coming back alive) and then he turns, and is a few meters away, when Finn calls out, “Poe,  _ wait _ !”

Finn’s heart breaks even more at the brief flicker of hope in Poe’s eyes, like maybe he was going to turn around, and Finn was going to say,  _ Poe, Resistance be damned, I’m deeply and entirely in love with you _ , or,  _ Poe, I want to kiss you until the day bleeds into night a thousand times over, and until all the stars in the galaxy die and are reborn _ . (And both of those things are true, he thinks). Instead, Finn’s hands stumble with the chain around his neck. “You forgot your ring.”

Poe’s expression drops, and he shakes his head. He gives a small, sad smirk, and says, “Keep it. It suits you.” 

Finn tries to swallow the memory those works evoke without letting it affect him, but he can’t help thinking of how far they’ve come since then, and how beautiful, and ecstatic and alive Poe looked at that moment. (And Poe still looks beautiful, and he’s still alive, but this moment feels like the opposite. Instead of a coming together, it’s a pulling away. Instead of a joy in knowing that each other are alive, there’s a fear that they both could be about to die.)

“Poe –” (He doesn’t say  _ but what if I die, and take this precious part of your life with me. _ )

“Keep it as a reminder, yeah? And a promise.” 

“A promise of what?” (He thinks he already knows the answer, standing there, wearing Poe’s jacket, and Poe’s ring, and the cumulative weight of every interaction since the moment they met.)

“That I’ll come home to you, Finn.” 

The world seems to move in slow motion, and it feels vaguely like a dream. Eons pass, as he watches Poe run back towards his ship, his say something long and emphatic to his pilots, and give BB-8 a pat on the head, and look back at Finn for a long instant, and climb into the cockpit. And then everything seems hyperreal, and too fast, and too bright, as Poe’s takes off, and his squadron fall into formation behind him. 

But it’s a war, and they’re soldiers, and this is what soldiers do.

 

***

 

(Soldiers fight. Soldiers leave. And maybe, soldiers come home, because there’s hope and love and the promise of something monumental and profound waiting for them. And it’s a matter of waiting, and never knowing, and hoping, and holding onto images of what he looked like, eyes closed after a kiss, and how sure he was, saying  _ you’re a person _ , and how he’d defend that sentiment if it meant blood.

It’s a war. They’re soldiers. This is what soldiers do.

But after that.

After that.

_ After that _ – if the universe decides to deal them a winning hand, if it decides that there’s been enough suffering and grief – they can be and do whatever they want. And Finn thinks he’ll be ready, then, to know what it is he wants.)

 

***

 

The first month away begins with the smell of burning bodies.

They land on Yarrala and it’s instantly overwhelming, the acrid, sickly sweet mixture of charred flesh and chemical fires. This is standard practice – Finn knows that, objectively – but the First Order classrooms never warned about the smell. They never warned about the overwhelming grief and horror elicited by the sight of faceless, blackened corpses, piled in a pit where they’d stood and been burnt alive. They’d taught about how to herd the crowd, how to check to make sure no-one escaped, how to disperse the fuel for the most efficient and effective burn. 

He throws up the moment they step out of the ship, and only stops because there’s nothing more left to expel. 

Kylo Ren isn’t there. In fact, there’s no evidence that the First Order were ever there at all, besides the obvious signs of absolute and total destruction. Rey reaches out with the Force, and touches every corner of the planet, and then falls to her knees in a flurry of frustration and despair, and Finn and Rose both sit with her while she cries. There’s nothing but death, she says. There’s no balance. Only darkness and loss.

A message is received of a smaller transporter departing the main First Order carrier. “That’s where he is,” Rey says, and Finn knows she’s trying to sound confident, but he hears her voice shake. 

They instantly take off in pursuit, and in the middle of piloting their transporter, Rey’s eyes get distant, and Finn fumbles to take over the controls so they don’t crash and die.

“Why are you running?” Rey asks an invisible spector of Kylo Ren, and the conversation ends with an adamant, “I’m going to find you.”

Kylo Ren escapes. It’s as simple as a single jump into hyperspace, when they’re within view of the transporter, and then he’s slipped out of their grasp. It’s a taunt, Finn knows that. It’s Kylo Ren saying,  _ as close as you get, I’ll always win _ . (And Finn doesn’t believe him, because trusts Rey, and he believes in her and he believes in the Light Side far more than be believes in the petty instability of the Dark Side’s champion.) Rey screams, and looks like she’s about to punch the control panel. Rose grabs her hands and draws her in, pressing a gentle kiss to her temple, and eventually Rey’s jaw unclenches and the rage in her eyes subsides slightly. 

That night, Finn dreams of everyone he knows being burnt alive. His hand is the one spilling the chemicals, and setting it alight, but he’s trapped in his body and can’t do anything to stop it. When he looks at his hands, they’re enclosed in thick white gloves, and when he blinks, the gloves are hidden by a layer of soot and blood. They scream endlessly, inhumanly, as the flames warp their way upwards. He watches as Rey’s skin melts off her skull, and as Poe’s eyes disintegrate into ash, and it blows into Finn’s mouth and his body forces him to swallow and then he’s gasping, suffocating, choking, and he wakes up like that, coughing violently. He barely makes it to the fresher before throwing up, and then just sits there and shakes, until Rey finds him, and holds him until he can breathe again. 

(And it goes like that, for weeks.)

They chase the ghost of Kylo Ren across the galaxy, and he’s always one step out of their reach. Finn wakes up in a cold sweat every night, shaking and feeling like he’s falling through space, and he can’t stop himself from crying. He whispers to himself in the dark of his bunk. He says  _ I’m a person _ and  _ I’m alive _ (but it isn’t the same as Poe whispering the words in his low, creaking voice, and holding Finn so he doesn’t float away.) 

During the day, he barely has time to think about Poe. He barely has time to hurt. He barely has time to consider whether Poe is even alive. It’s all action, and strategy, and making sure Rey is as okay as she could possibly be. They’re always running, and getting shot at, and barely making it to their ship, and finding somewhere to land to make repairs, and then the cycle starts again. 

But at night, when he wakes up alone and empty, it’s like the accumulation of hurt and longing hits him all at once. He closes his eyes, and pictures Poe standing in front of him, alive and smiling and surrounded by the warm glow of the sunset. He thinks of his voice, and his smell, and the feeling of his hands, and he repeats the same memories until they feel wound so tight into the very fabric of his being that nothing could make him forget, not the passage of a thousand years, and not a lifetime of torture and reconditioning by the First Order. 

It’s been thirty days since he last saw Poe when he records his first holo message. 

This is more for himself, than Poe, he thinks, as he inserts a card into the recorder. Comms are almost completely dark. Nothing is received or sent, unless it’s an absolute emergency, and even then it’s full of code words and ambiguities that only make sense as part of a larger puzzle, because anything they send, the First Order can track. They don’t have the hardware or the software or the people to continuously develop new incriptions, and so they’re condemned to near-absolute silence. The likelihood of him getting the chance to send a data card with his sad, irrelevant,  _ pointless _ messages is near to nill, and even if he could, the thought of the First Order intercepting a broadcast of his private thoughts makes him shiver. But, he wants to talk to Poe. He  _ needs  _ to talk to Poe, and this is the next best thing.

“Hello,” he starts, and it sounds way too formal. “Hi. Hi, Poe,” he says to the holo recorder, and tries to pretend like there’s any point to this at all. “You’re probably never going to see this, and if you do it’s because I’m dead, but… I miss you. And I hope you’re alive.” He swallows. “I _know_ you’re alive.” If he were dead, he thinks surely the universe would have sent word. Rey would have felt it through the Force. (At least, that’s what he tells himself. Believing otherwise is painful.) “Anyway. I miss talking to you. I’m not going to make these messages often, because I don’t want forget that you’re … you know, different from my inner thoughts, which will happen if I just talk to nothing all the time and pretend that it’s you. And then I’m worried I’ll end up hating you because my thoughts will have your voice, and they’re never very nice thoughts, a lot of the time.” He swallows. “We don’t know where Kylo Ren is. We’re in the Perkell sector at the moment, and we’re going to land tomorrow and try and,” he shrugs. “Find out anything we can, I guess. How are you?” he asks, and then cringes. “This is a stupid idea, and I don’t know why I’m doing it, other than I miss you so much, Poe. I don’t really sleep much anymore which isn’t new, but… I kinda took you being there for granted.” He pauses for a long moment, and feels incredibly ridiculous, talking to nothing. “I love you, Poe” he says eventually. “Don’t forget to come home.”

 

***

 

The thing about grief is that it demands to be felt. The thing about grief is that even imagined loss can cause it to sweep through you, and leave you feeling like there’s a gaping hole somewhere in the middle of your sternum.

Every time Finn wonders too hard whether Poe is okay, the grief hits him with alarming intensity. In those moments, it feels like he’s actually, really, permanently lost Poe. The imagined images of him lying shot, burnt, dead are so vivid that it doesn’t matter what his rational mind tells him. It doesn’t matter that he knows, odds are, Poe is alive, because he’s so intensely skilled, and despite his bursts of ill-advised passion, he’s sensible, and smart. It doesn’t matter, because the irrational part of him (the same part that has nightmares about fire and blood; the same part that can’t breathe sometimes when he thinks too hard about the First Order) feels the loss like it’s real. And so all of him, even the rational parts, is debilitated by grief. 

He never gets used to it, the feeling of losing Poe. Every time, it hurts with an intensity akin to a lightsaber being shoved through his chest. It burns with the power of a thousand supernovas, and it implodes into infinite black holes, dense and sinister and drawing Finn in to the spiralling, dark abyss. The thing about grief is that it makes you realise,  _ really  _ realise, the value of what you lost (not that he didn’t realise before, but it makes his  _ know _ , beyond any reasonable doubt). When he thinks about losing Poe, Finn wishes for a thousand more tiny moments of intimacy. He wishes he’d kissed him, even one more time.

 

***

 

(It’s been fifty-nine days since he last saw Poe when he records his third holo message, and he tells Poe about loss, and grief, and the future. “I don’t want to die before we get the chance to really live,” he says. “I don’t want to lose you before I decide that it’s time to really  _ be with you _ .”

“Please don’t die,” he reminds the emptiness, and as always hopes the universe somehow carries his thoughts to Poe. “I’ve felt you die every night in my sleep, and that feeling, lasting forever, would destroy me, Poe. Don’t die.”)

 

***

 

It’s been seventy-two days since he last saw Poe when he first gets real, tangible confirmation that he’s alive.

They’re camped with a small group of Resistance fighters who Finn vaguely remembers from Chyria on one of Li-Toran’s moons. “I spoke to Commander Dameron this morning,” their Captain says, and Finn feels like the ground has fallen out from under him, and he doesn’t really hear the rest of what she says. 

“You spoke to Poe?” he interrupts after a moment, and his voice comes out as a croak. He clears his throat. “Uh, Commander Dameron, I mean.” 

She nods, and gives him a look that says  _ I just said that, please pay attention _ .

“He’s alive?” Finn confirms.

“Unless I was talking to a ghost, it sure seems like it,” she answers.

It’s been seventy-three days since he last saw Poe when he records his fifth holo message.

“Hi, Poe,” he says. “You’re alive, so that’s great.”

 

***

 

Finn has felt rain before. It rained on Chyria a couple of times, and once, about five years ago, he thinks, they’d been training on a planet in the Hosnian system when the sky had split open and drenched them. It had made his armour even heavier, but the moment the smell made its way past the filters in his helmet, faint but still so overwhelmingly  _ alive _ , he’d had to work harder than he ever had before to hold back a happy laugh. 

Once, on Chyria, him and Poe had been sitting outside near the landing strip, when a few gentle drops of water had brushed his face. He looked up, and then all at once, it started pouring. This time, he didn’t have to hold back the laugh.

“Let’s get inside,” Poe had shouted, grabbing Finn’s hand, and pulling him to his feet.

“Wait,” he said, and tugged Poe closer. “Let’s just stay here for a bit.”

Poe had looked at him, and he smiled so minutely, but so warmly, and it made Finn’s heart leap. “Okay.” 

Finn could feel Poe’s eyes on him while he watched the way the rain pattered off the sides of ships, and ran languidly off the tips of leaves, gathering in puddles on the ground that vibrated constantly with the splash of new raindrops. 

The world felt so alive, and he grabbed Poe’s hands and spun him in a wide circle, before saying, “Come on,” and he didn’t let go of his hand as they sprinted back to the base. 

The screen of ivy separating their cave from the outdoors was heavy with the addition of rain when he dragged Poe inside. His hair was plastered flat against his forehead, and it seemed natural when Finn reached out and pushed it back, and then let his thumb run over the drops of water on his brow. Neither of them had stopped smiling since it started to rain. 

Finn had been too caught up in the moment to even consider the cold, until he felt Poe shiver. 

“You’re cold,” he had said, but couldn’t make himself regret staying outside. 

The firewood smelled fresh and rich and he piled it into the heating unit at the back of their cave. When he walked back over to Poe, and without speaking slid his jacket off ( _ their _ jacket really, that Poe just happened to be wearing that day) and hung it by the heater to dry, he was overcome with the damp scent of rain, mingled with the crisp smell of Poe’s skin. 

It had been easy to grab some blankets and settle down together in front of the heater, and talk, and pretend like the only things in the universe, in that moment, were Finn and Poe and the gentle patter of the rain. 

But the rain now – the rain now is nothing like that.

They’re on a planet in the Outer Rim, and the landscape is a medley of sharp, jutting rocks, dark and violent. The rain is vicious, cutting at Finn’s exposed skin, and chilling him to the bone. This time, there’s no urge to laugh. Instead of the damp smells of life, when the rain hits the rocks it brings with it a sharp tang of copper, and the metallic taste when the water hits his tongue gives the illusion that the sky is spitting blood. 

Thunder claps, and it sounds so akin to an explosion that it makes Finn flinch. A shock of lighting illuminates the world, for a brief second, and Finn falls, and feels his calf be sliced open by the serrated edge of a rock. He stops just long enough to grab a strip of cloth out of his pack and crudely bandage it. Rey stops and looks back at him, and shouts something, but he can’t hear it over the torrential roar of the rain.

It’s been one-hundred and forty days since he last saw Poe.

 

***

 

It’s a week later when Finn feels the universe decide that  _ this is it _ . The moment they make their plan, Finn knows, one way or another, this is going to be the end.

When they’re ten minutes away from the First Order carrier, Finn momentarily excuses himself from the cockpit, and with fumbling hands turns on the holo recorder. 

“Poe,” he says. “Poe, I might be about to die. I’m going to try my best not to, but just in case I do…” he swallows. “Just in case I do, I need you to know that I love you. I love you more than I know how to. I’m  _ in love _ with you, I think. If I do die, I want you to know that I’m sorry. I’m  _ not  _ sorry for not being with you before, because it needed to happen that way. I wasn’t ready, and it wouldn’t have been fair to you. Or either of us. But I  _ am _ sorry that I won’t get to be with you  _ now _ , and I hope that you find someone who makes you as happy as you make me.”

He grasps Poe’s ring, and lets the feeling of the metal, as familiar at this point as the memory of Poe’s voice, remind him of everything he doesn’t want to lose. “Whatever happens, keep living, Poe. And if I die, or if I get captured and they recondition me, I don’t want you to be sad. I want you to remember that you were part of the best moments of my life, and you gave me things I never thought I’d have. Like a home.” He closes his eyes, and breathes. “But if I don’t die, which I really hope I don’t, I hope you still mean everything you said before – before _ all this _ . There’s a lot I still don’t know, and the fact that I probably want to be with you for the rest of my life scares me, but… I know that I’m in love you, Poe. And I know that I’ll never stop loving you.”

He flicks off the recorder and slides out the card. When he runs back to the cockpit, he hands it to Rey.

“Nothing’s going to happen to me,” he promises, and hates that it feels like a lie. “But if it does… give this to Poe?” he asks. 

Rey opens her mouth, like she’s going to ask what it is, but then furrows her brow and frowns, and just nods instead. He doesn’t want to die, but he knows perfectly that things don’t always work out the way he wants them to. And so this is  _ just in case _ . Just in case the universe chooses to ignore what Finn wants. No plan is foolproof, and no amount of wishing and hoping can contravene death. 

No plan is foolproof, this one maybe even less than others, and the plan is this:

Kylo Ren is on the carrier. If they send out an encrypted message to the Resistance they have a ten minute window before the First Order will decipher it. That means, they have ten minutes from the moment they sneak onto the ship to get Rey to Ren’s inner chamber. Then, Finn and Rose will head to the other end of the ship and override the securities. Their code will infect all large First Order ships in this half of the galaxy (which is most, if not  _ all  _ of them), and then fifteen minutes later everything, including the ship they’re on, will explode. In that time, Rey will kill Kylo Ren and escape, and Finn and Rose have told her not to come after them. ( _ I know we’re not expendable _ , _ and I don’t want to die _ , Finn had argued, and had realised with a start that he was telling the truth,  _ but you just need to trust us to find our own way out _ .) 

The minute they enact their plan, and send out the message, one of two things will happen, and whether or not Finn and Rose make it out is contingent on which it is. Firstly, it may happen that no-one hears their message, or no-one thinks to decode it, or no-one gets there on time. Then, they’ll be left alone, with no backup, and once they’ve overridden the system and sent the self-destruct order, and have begun the danger-fraught journey to the main docking area, Finn and Rose will be inevitably be captured by Stormtroopers, and they’ll all blow up together. Or, secondly, it may happen that someone hears them, and decodes their message, and by some miracle manages to reach the ship in time. It may happen that someone heeds the important part, and takes out the cannons, which have had their shields taken down, and will be waiting for Finn and Rose in the docking bay, while, from the other end of the ship, Rey commandeers Ren’s escape pod. 

It’s not a suicide mission. It’s a mission that relies on the promise of a series of unlikely miracles, that is fraught with a thousand moments something could go wrong, and bring it all shattering down. It’s a mission that’s contingent on hope, and trust, and the belief that, against all odds, the Resistance will be strong enough to come for them. And, for maybe the first time, Finn has no trouble believing in improbable contingencies.

 

***

 

They send the comm and make it onto the ship without being detected, which, Finn thinks, means at least step one went smoothly. So that’s something.

They reach the back of the ship, where Kylo Ren’s chambers are, without being detected. Every time they squeeze themselves into a crevice in the wall, and listen as the footsteps of Stormtroopers get closer, and don’t stop, and then wane, Finn feels his adrenaline spike.  Like the Finaliser, and like every First Order ship Finn has ever seen, everything exists in contrast: of bright hallways, lit by buzzing tubes of white light, and of dark shadowy corners; of the noises of war and machinery and heavy armour, and of the silent, hidden places, behind unused doors and in unchecked gaps. And once, Finn had occupied only those first spaces, the bright, loud ones, and had barely been conscious of the possibility of anything other.  _ But now _ . Now, he occupies those secret, dark, quiet places, and watches like a stranger as the memories of his old life parade through the corridors.

There’s a line of Troopers waiting for them at the end of a long hallway, a stark sea of white against the black metal and polished chrome. Finn doesn’t let himself think too hard as he shoots at them, and tries not to imagine how, if things were different, that would be him, getting cut down by the Resistance, unimportant, unloved, forgotten the moment his body hit the ground. Rey’s lightsaber slices through their armour with ease, and soon, they’re at the door, and Rose is getting ready to try and hack the entry codes, when it swings open.  The room beyond is dark, and seeped in a red glow, like the air itself is bleeding. Nothing moves, and Finn can feel the sinister breath of the stillness seeping into the corridor.

“He’s waiting,” Rey says.

It’s been nine minutes since they boarded, and if the commotion in the hall didn’t already alert other Stormtroopers of their presence, soon their message will be decrypted and the First Order will know every inch of the plan. 

Finn wants to follow Rey into the gloomy red glow of Kylo Ren’s chambers, and aim and shoot before he has a chance to draw his lightsaber. But that isn’t the plan, and so he hugs Rey for as long as they can afford (which is far too short, and it’s not enough), and reloads his blaster as Rose kisses Rey and whispers something in her ear that Finn doesn’t catch. 

And then, Rey is stepping inside, and they’re sprinting away, and the seconds are ticking by until they hit the ten minute mark. It’s about another twenty seconds before the world turns red, and the blare of alarms becomes the only sound in existence.  It’s overwhelming, for a brief instant, but there’s no time to be overwhelmed, so Finn blinks and forces the chaos to fall into the background. He grabs Rose’s hand and they keep running. They kill six Troopers. Then, they kill another eight. And then four. And then seven. 

It’s a war. They’re soldiers. This is what soldiers do, but Finn knows already that his nightmares will soon be joined by a collection of faceless Troopers calling him a traitor and asking  _ why _ . 

Finn covers Rose, his blaster held at the ready while she pulls the main control panel off the wall and adjusts the wires, and then the doors to the server room are flying open. They stay concealed behind the corner and shoot, and Finn hears two bodies hit the floor.  The shots come fast and heavy, and Finn forgets where he ends and his blaster begins as Rose covers him while he ducks and rolls in,  taking out two more Troopers in quick succession. 

He smoothly jumps back to his feet, and is ready to shoot the last Trooper when he realises their gun is trained on him, but they haven’t fired. 

He sees Rose raise her blaster, but lifts his hand and signals for her to stop. 

“You don’t have to shoot us,” he tells the Stormtrooper, and sees their hands shake.

“I do,” they say, all emotion and any defining characteristics turned into a uniform, robotic hum by their mask. 

“You can make a choice,” Finn takes his hand off the trigger of his blaster, and only hesitates for a moment before holstering it. “I know what it’s like to be where you’re standing right now, and trust me when I say, you don’t have to shoot.” 

“Are you –?” Finn thinks he hears the Trooper’s voice shake, even through the mechanisms of the helmet, but he also might just be imagining it.

“I’m Finn,” he replies. “I used to be designation FN-2187. I’m with the Resistance, and I made the choice not to shoot. I’m capable of love,” he says, “and I’m human. And so are you.” 

The Trooper lowers their blaster, and it drops to the floor with a clang. 

“Help us,” Finn asks. “We’re not gonna let them win.” 

The Trooper shakes their head. “I can’t,” their mechanised voice says. 

“Please,” Finn presses, but he understands. He knows that this Stormtrooper – this  _ person _ – just made the hardest choice they’ve ever made. They didn’t shoot, and he sees himself, standing in that crowd on Jakku and being ordered to fire, and making the choice that he  _ couldn’t _ , that it wasn’t him. (And he didn’t know who he was. He had no idea what it was to be a person, not yet, but it begun with that moment.)

“I can–”the Trooper hesitates. “I can promise I won’t report that you’re here,” they say. “But that’s it. I can’t  _ help _ the Resistance.” 

“That’s all we need,” Finn nods. “Thank you,” and he doesn’t say,  _ by rebelling, you’re by default helping the Resistance _ , and doesn’t say,  _ it’s still the right thing to do, even if it’s for selfish reasons _ , because those were things it took him a long time to learn, and hearing them in those first moments would have been overwhelming. 

They don’t pick up their blaster before quickly making their way to the door. “Wait,” Finn says. They turn around, and he recognises it as the stance of someone who knows that they’re nothing more than a broken cog, an inhuman piece of machinery that deserves to be discarded of. They’re getting ready to be executed. “You should get off this ship,” he tells them. “Get off this ship and get far away, and hurry. You don’t have to die in the same way you were forced to lived.” Finn wishes beyond all else that he could see their face. He’s gotten so used to it, the ease of eye contact, and the endless myriad of ways that people smile, frown, bite their lip, each one conveying an emotion completely unique to that person, that expression, that moment. He’d almost forgotten how devastating it was to never see a single face, to only lock eyes with empty black sockets.. But regardless, he meets where he knows their eyes are, and hopes they understand that it means  _ please, please listen to me _ . They don’t respond, and leave quickly, and the door slides shut behind them. 

Rose presses her hand to his back, and he hadn’t realised how fast his breathing had gotten until she says, “Breathe, Finn,” and he closes his eyes, and inhales, and tries to ignore the smells of blood and death emanating from the dead Stormtroopers around them. 

He opens his eyes, and meets Rose’s gaze. In an instant, his blood is buzzing with the knowledge that  _ this is it _ , the decisive blow, one of those grand, shattering moments that change the course of the universe. He pictures Rey, as she must be right now, holding the upper hand in battle against Kylo Ren, poised, as she always was, to win,  and he nods.

“Let’s do this,” he states.

It takes three minutes for Rose to override the securities, and another minute to execute the kill command. She’s spent the past several months preparing for this, and it’s ballast to how much of a genius she is that she manages to take down the First Order’s computer system on her first try. 

And then, the moment Rose types the command, the alarm sound changes from a rounded _ whoop _ to a high-pitched, insistent shrill, and the clock is counting down. 

_ Fifteen _ .

Rose enters another series of commands that lock access to the system, and make it irreversible.

_ Fourteen _ .

They run out the door, and there’s no Stormtroopers waiting for them, and Finn knows that the Trooper from before made a choice, and that choice saved them. 

_ Thirteen, twelve, eleven _ .

They run through the halls, and turn a corner to see at least twenty Stormtroopers waiting for them, and they begin shooting all at once. Finn tries not to think when he grabs Rose and pulls her back around the corner, before throwing a handheld explosive into the hall. It’s even louder than the screech of the alarms, and Finn feels the shockwave rush past them and sear the skin on the left side of his face. His ears are ringing and he can’t hear anything when Rose grabs his hand and they keep running. 

_ Ten _ .

They reach the docking bay, and crouch behind a pile of crates while streams of blaster fire fly overhead. Finn pops his head up just enough to get an accurate aim, and he’s taking down Stormtrooper after Stormtrooper, aiming for the eye sockets and vulnerable black areas of the armour. 

_ Nine _ .

There’s so many of them, and Finn runs out of charge in his blaster, and reloads, and then runs out again. Rose meets his eyes, and he sees determination, and hope. 

“It’s not over, yet,” she reminds him.

“We need to get over there,” Finn says, pointing to an area about three metres to their right, where the wing of a broken ship will shield them, and where the body of a dead Stormtrooper will provide them with new ammunition. 

“I’ll cover you, and you run,” she shouts. She inspects her blaster and turns back to him. “I’ve got enough charge left.” 

Finn hugs Rose. “I love you,” he says, just in case, and he means it. 

_ Eight _ .

He ducks low and sprints, and screams in pain when a line of blaster fire grazes his shoulder, searing through the material of his shirt and jacket. A voice in the back of his head, slightly hysterical from the pain, wonders how many of Poe’s jackets are going to get destroyed by the First Order. He reaches cover, and staunchly ignores the sting and the wet drip of blood as he picks up the Stormtrooper’s blaster, overwhelmingly familiar, and starts shooting. Rose makes it over without being hit, and slides next to him, her breathing fast and heavy.

_ Seven _ .

They’re starting to thin out the crowd, but then the doors to the left of the bay open, and a new wave of Stormtroopers flood in. Finn takes a deep breath, and doesn’t listen to the part of him that’s saying,  _ this is how you die, shot down by the First Order, still believing in a cause that was always doomed to fail _ , because he knows it’s a liar, that insidious, doubt-filled part of him. He squeezes Rose’s hand, before letting go and continuing to shoot, and he thinks he sees a speck in the sky outside the carrier. 

_ Six _ . 

A familiar A-Wing comes barreling through the opening in the wall, guns blazing and taking down a large portion of the crowd of Stormtroopers. 

“That’s Jess’ ship!” Finn shouts, and lets out a cheer. “They heard us!” 

The A-Wing lands shakily nearby, leaving behind a trail of sparks as it scrapes across the metal floor. The cockpit opens and Finn sees Jessika Pava wave at them, and she shouts something that he can’t decipher over the blare of sirens and sound of blaster fire. He grabs Rose’s hand and they sprint towards the ship, and cramp themselves into the empty copilot’s seat, Rose squeezed onto Finn’s lap. 

“You’re the bravest dumbasses in the galaxy,” Jess says in way of a greeting as she pulls the A-Wing into flight, taking out two TIE-fighters in the process.

_ Five _ .

She pulls them out of the bay and they’re hurtling into space. 

“Blue Leader here, can confirm phase two is complete,” she shouts.

“Copy that, Blue Leader,” Poe’s voice crackles through the comms, strong and authoritative, and Finn feels his stomach drop.

Of its own volition, his hand reaches out and grabs the microphone on the dashboard. “ _ Poe _ ,” he says. 

He hears an intake of breath. “ _ Finn. _ ” 

The ship shakes as they’re hit by one of the pursuing TIE-fighters. Jess sharply swings the ship around, and shouts, “Reunite, later. Someone help me shoot.” 

Rose maneuvers herself awkwardly so she can grab the controls, and a TIE-fighter explodes into a mass of flames.

_ Four _ .

Finn sees a pod eject from the far-side of the carrier, and lets out another cheer. “That’s Rey!” he yells, and the physical pain of where he was shot is nothing compared to the exaltation, and the knowledge that they just  _ won _ . 

_ Three _ .

A mismatched collection of ships swing around behind them, and take out the remaining TIE-fighters. 

“Thanks for saving my ass, Black Leader,” Jess says. “I’ve got your boy here with me.” 

“Confirming a pod leaving the ship,” an unfamiliar voice says through the comms before Poe can respond. “Intercepting now.”

“ _ Don’t shoot _ , Red Three,” Poe shouts. “It’s Rey. Make sure she’s safe, and let’s get the fuck outta here.” 

_ Two _ . 

A ship comes zipping around the side of the carrier and joins formation.

“Red Three, confirming I’ve picked up the Jedi,” the voice says, and Finn reaches out the grab the microphone again, but Jess blocks his hand.

“Let’s get out of here first, okay?” she reasons quietly. 

“Good job, Red Three,” Poe says. “Nice to have you back, Rey, Rose, Finn,” his voice catches when he says Finn’s name. 

_ One _ . 

“Jump to hyperspace on the count of ten,” Poe commands, and the ships are falling into three triangular formations. 

Finn sees three ships eject from the far side of the carrier, and he knows that it’s Stormtroopers, making a choice that they’re ready to live.

_ Zero _ .

They make the leap just as the ship explodes, and simultaneously, all over the galaxy, First Order carriers are bursting into pieces, and taking with them the symbols and leaders of the Dark Side. The world transitions instantly from the red of fire to the cobalt blue of hyperspace, and Finn lets out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.

They won the war. They survived.

 

***

 

(Rey tells him later, how it happened. 

Kylo Ren had been waiting for her, sitting on a throne, alone in the large, dark room, blanketed by the soft red glow. His helmet had been off, and she said he looked even more unhinged than the last time she saw him, like something behind his eyes had snapped. He was gaunt, and his hair hung in greasy tendrils over his face, doing nothing to hide the dark circles under his eyes. 

“Nice of you to join me,” he had said, standing up, and Rey noticed how his back remained hunched, giving the appearance of something inhuman. 

She had extended her lightsaber, and he did the same. “I’m glad you’ve decided to stop running,” Rey replied. “And I hope you’re ready to die.” 

“It’s sweet that you think that,” he said, and Rey had felt sick to her stomach. 

“You’ll pay for what you’ve done. You’ve caused so much suffering, Ben, and you’re going to pay.”

They’d fought for what felt like eternities, and Rey admitted she was surprised at how skillfully he fought, despite his weary and crazed appearance. Eventually, Rey had him pinned to the ground, her foot on his chest, and used the Force to rip his lightsaber from his hand, hurtling it across the room.

“You won’t kill me,” he spat. “You’re too  _ good _ . It makes you weak, your dedication to false things, like the concept of good and evil. It’s not too late, Rey, to realise the _ truth  _ of the universe, and join me. There’s no such thing as good or evil, there’s only power, and we can either be slaves to it, and believe in foolish, ancient concepts of morality, or we can seize it. We can be gods.”

“You’re the one who needs to realise the truth,” she had said, and pressed the tip of her lightsabre close to his throat. “Even if there is no such thing as good or evil, there’s such a thing as choice. And I choose to believe in hope, and love, and happiness. I make the choice to do the right thing.” 

And Rey had thrust her lightsaber through Kylo Ren’s heart, and, in an instant, she felt a shift in the Force, like the universe gave a sigh of relief.)

 

***

 

They drop through the atmosphere of a planet that Finn doesn’t know the name of, and the world feels like it’s thrumming with possibility. They stagger out of the ship, and he hugs Rose and shouts, and then Rey is running over and he embraces her and lifts her off the ground, and they laugh, with the sheer joy of being alive.

“We won!” Finn shouts, and hugs Rey tightly again when he drops her to the ground. “It’s over.” 

“It’s over,” she confirms. He lets her go, and she turns to Rose, and draws her into a kiss, and Finn decides that he should give them a moment alone. 

He walks around to the other side of the A-Wing, and against the glare of the sun his eyes focus on another formation of ships sweeping out of the sky, and he feels ready to vibrate out of his skin. He’s lived this moment more times than he can count, in reality and in his dreams, but it always feels fresh, the anticipation of waiting for Poe to land, of not really knowing what he’ll do when he does. (And, it happens in exactly the same way it always does.) Poe’s ship touches down, and Finn is running towards him, and instead of words, his thoughts are a cacophony of feeling, of the colour orange, of the smell of Poe, of the way his arms feel when he wraps them around Finn and holds and doesn’t let go.

“ _ Poe _ ,” he whispers, and thinks he might be crying, but knows it’s fine, because Poe is crying too. 

“Finn,” he replies, and his voice is exactly the way Finn remembered it, except now it’s here, and it’s real. “Finn, I missed you so much.” 

“I love you,” he says, and doesn’t open his eyes, just in case the moment dissolves, and he’s back on a cramped bunk, in some dark corner of the universe, waiting and hoping for the war to end. 

“I love you too,” Poe says without hesitation. (And Finn had been so worried that he’d come back, and Poe would have decided it wasn’t worth it anymore; that the pain and the waiting and the difficulty inherent in loving him would have been too much.  _ I could spend every day for the rest of my life with you _ , Poe had said once, and Finn knows now that it was true.) 

He pulls back enough that he can get a proper look at Poe, and three things strike him at once. First, is that Poe’s beard is longer now, and so is his hair. It falls back onto his forehead even when Finn brushes it back, and his beard is coarse when he presses his nose to Poe’s cheek. Second, is that a large, angry red scar is curving its way down Poe’s jawline and neck. He presses his fingertips against it, gently, and when Poe doesn’t flinch he drags his fingers downwards, and the scar is raised and smooth and distinct against the rest of Poe’s skin. Third, is that he’s looking at Finn like he’s the sun. 

“We won the war,” Poe whispers, and he hasn’t stopped touching Finn, since the moment they embraced. “What did I tell you, buddy? We won.” 

“I knew we would,” Finn lies, and then breathes and presses his forehead to Poe’s, the way he’s done a hundred times before.

Everywhere, there’s the sound of soldiers coming home, and Finn knows that the way he feels right now – this rush of triumph and prospect – isn’t unique, but still can’t shake the feeling that they’re the only people in the galaxy, and that everything is orbiting around this instant. “What now?” Poe asks softly, and his hands tighten in the fabric of Finn’s shirt.

Finn thinks for a moment. He thinks about home. He thinks about promises made, in the glowing darkness of their room on Chyria. They won the war, and they both survived. 

“Take me to Yavin IV,” he says.

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _It’s easy to think of himself not as a soldier, and instead as_ just Finn, _who exists in this isolated moment, home, and safe, and in love with Poe._

(vii)

 

Finn had always thought that he’d feel lost, when the part of his identity that was so wholly wrapped up in the existence of war was torn away. But instead, it feels like the beginning of a new era. He sits next to Poe, in the passenger seat of a small transporter, with BB-8 beeping quietly and absently in the back. The infinite expanse of space is punctuated by an infinite expanse of stars, orbited by infinite planets and infinite moons, and they exist right in the middle of it all, in a universe of infinite possibility.

When he reaches out and grabs Poe’s hand, it’s the right thing to do. There are still lots of things he doesn’t know, but he’s realised now that that’s okay, because he’s got the rest of the life to work it out. And, because the universe works in complex systems of antithesis and contrast, there are plenty things he _does_ know, and it makes it easier to correct the doubt, wherever it arises.

 _Are you worthy of love?_ says the ghost of a Stormtrooper, and he replies with _I always have been_ .  
_How do you love him?_ says a voice that sounds like his own, and he replies with _like nothing words can describe_ .  
_And will it be worth it?_ says the reach of infinity, and he replies with _yes_.

 

***

 

When they land on Yavin IV, the first thing that Finn notices is the green. The second thing he notices is the way Poe doesn’t let go of his hand as he leads him through the gate of his childhood home. The air feels thick with tension when they walk inside, and Poe draws back the shades to bathe the dusty interior with the soft, early afternoon sunlight.

“I have so much to tell you,” Finn says, while Poe is pulling the protective plastic tarps off the living room furniture. “I don’t know where to start.”

“There’s no hurry,” Poe replies, as he runs a finger along the back of the sofa, and frowns when it still comes back covered in a thin layer of dust. He meets Finn’s eyes and bites his lip. “We’ve got time. You don’t need to decide yet.”

And it feels imbued with meaning that extends beyond the current conversation. It’s a direct response to those words said five months ago (and it feels so much longer than that, like Finn has changed and aged and grown in a way that would normally take a decade). _Not yet_ , he had said, _I don’t know yet_.

“Deciding won’t be too hard,” he says now, and means it.

They walk into the kitchen, and Poe digs around in the cupboards until he finds a kettle, and starts to heat up water for caf. Sitting at the counter, watching Poe clean the grime from the bottom of some mugs, Finn is struck by the fact that he’s never really been in a house before, not like this. And they’re both still raw, and fresh from the end of the war, and although Poe has shaved his beard, the scar is still there, and Finn hasn’t asked how it happened, not yet. But even so, it’s easy to imagine this moment, taken out of context, the sunlight streaming through the window and illuminating Poe’s skin as he leans his elbows on the counter and meets Finn’s eyes.

“I love you, Finn,” Poe says, and his brows furrow, like he’s worried that saying it will be too much.

“I love you, too,” Finn responds, and he sees this moment again, stretched out beyond the context of the present. He sees it as it would be – as it _could be_ – months from now, years from now, because he knows with confidence that, if they want to, this can be them, forever. The days are no longer numbered. They’re not living in anticipation of the next mission, of the next life-threatening battle. Finn is alive, and Poe is alive, and, finally, there’s nothing standing in the way of them _living_.

Poe pours their cups of caf, and comes to sit down next him, their shoulders brushing, and Finn feels the mostly-healed blaster wound on his arm throb slightly at the contact, but the pain quickly passes. Finn wraps his hands around the warmth of the mug, and leans his head on Poe’s shoulder.

“I recorded holo messages for you, while I was gone,” he tells him, and feels Poe turn his head to look at him.

“Why?” he asks.

Finn hums. “I missed talking to you. I know it’s dumb, but–”

“It’s not dumb,” Poe murmurs. “I imagined talking to you.” He laughs. “Jess was worried I was going crazy, and maybe I was, a bit. But… I missed you.”

“Not crazy,” Finn shakes his head, as much he can without letting it fall from Poe’s shoulder. “And I thought I was going to die,” he says after a long moment, quieter now. “There were things I needed to say to you, before time ran out.” He pauses again, and thinks. “You can watch them, if you want.”

His heart thrums at the possibility of Poe hearing him frantically admit that he loves him, and begging him not to mourn his death. Part of him wants to see Poe’s reaction, but mostly he thinks the embarrassment would kill him, and he kind of doesn’t know why he offered.

“I won’t,” Poe replies, and Finn is instantly calmer. “Not unless you want me to.”

“I don’t,” he admits.

He lifts his head from Poe’s shoulder and takes a sip of his caf. It’s the perfect mix of bitter and warm, and he extends his foot and rests it against the back of Poe’s ankle. There’s no reason to be always touching, except Finn wants it (and he knows Poe wants it too, if the way he reaches out and traces the  curve of Finn’s wrist is anything to go by).

He’s never known calm like this, not in all his years as a Stormtrooper, and not in all his life as a person, with a name, and an identity, and a place in the universe. Poe’s fingers are rough against his skin, and the parts of Finn that are haunted by fire and blood and death are still there – they’ll probably never leave – but in this second, it’s easy to separate himself from it. It’s easy to think of himself not as a soldier, or a part of any massive, universal narrative, and instead as _just Finn_ , who exists in this isolated moment, home, and safe, and in love with Poe.

 

***

 

That night, Finn grabs Poe’s hand and says, “Show me the flowers. The ones you told me about, that time.” He feels impatient, pulled too tight, and although he knows they have now until forever to make life what they want it to be, he doesn’t want to wait that long. He doesn’t really know how to make the things he wants into a reality, and so decides that he’s just going to do what feels right, and if experience is anything to go by, it’ll lead him exactly where he needs to be.

Poe leads him to the edge of the forest, and they walk for about fifteen minutes, and then they reach a field. It’s even more beautiful than Finn had imagined when Poe described it to him. The flowers glow, like tiny pieces of moonlight fallen to the ground, and they tickle Finn’s ankles as he pulls Poe forward. Yavin is orange in the sky above them, and Finn doesn’t stop to count the moons, but they’re dotted through the sky, droplets of white against the blanket of stars. He grabs Poe’s hands, and pulls him close, and Poe’s laugh is better than any music he’s ever heard.

Finn sits, tugging Poe’s hand until he’s cross-legged in front of him. Acting out of instinct, out of some pull of _this is right, and it always has been_ , Finn plucks one of the glowing orchids and places it behind Poe’s ear.

Poe laughs again. “Do you ever feel like everything that happens is connected, in some way?” he asks, and it’s a heavy question, worth hours of pondering, but Finn shrugs and runs the velvety petals of an an orchid between his thumb and forefinger..

“It probably is,” he responds.

Finn lies down, and the flowers tickle his cheek, and his exposed forearms, and it’s the most natural thing in the world when Poe slides next to him, and lets his fingertips wander over the palm of Finn’s hand. He craves it with such intensity, the feeling of being wrapped in Poe’s arms beneath of a sweeping shroud of tiny lights. They stay like that, still and quiet for a moment, but Finn can feel his heart rate increase with every brush of Poe’s skin against his. He looks over at Poe, and is overcome with how beautiful he is, the glow of the orchid casting soft shadows across the sharp curve of his jaw. He looks up at the sky, at the orange glow of Yavin (and it’s the exact shade of orange that comes to mind when he thinks about loving Poe), and at the moons, and the stars, each one of them an individual sun, burning with no purpose other than the simple fact of being.

Finn pushes himself up on an elbow, and reaches out, tracing the skin just above Poe’s collarbone. “I’m sorry I made you wait,” Finn whispers, and the look of understanding in Poe’s eyes makes him stop before he starts over-explaining himself, as he is known to do.

“Finn,” Poe says, and pushes himself up enough that they’re at eye-level. “Finn, I’d wait a lifetime for you. You don’t have to know, or be ready. Not now, and not ever, if you don’t want.”

If he had to pinpoint an exact time that he decided he was ready to love Poe, it would be now, he thinks. Really, he’s known for a while, and he’s felt it for even longer, but in that moment, as the flowers and the stars bleed together into one infinite expanse of light, it’s impossible to be scared, and he knows, all at once and completely, exactly how he feels.

And there are no words for it, and maybe there won’t ever be words. The way he feels is defined by the way Poe looks at him, with such earnesty and hope and love. It’s defined by the moon and the sun, and by the feeling of floating together in a sea of light. It’s defined by the feeling of Poe’s lips, as Finn leans forward and kisses him, and by the way that Poe kisses back, soft and gentle, but with a heat that makes Finn’s skin feel electric. It’s defined by the way Poe’s eyes reflect the moonlight as Finn whispers, “I love you. I know exactly how I love you. I know now.” And he wants to scream it to the universe, and make sure every star from here until the end of time knows the way that Finn loves Poe. Instead, he kisses him again, and whispers, “I’m in love with you,” and even though the words aren’t enough, they’re still something.

“I’m in love with you, too,” Poe replies, and laughs into the kiss. “In case you didn’t work that out already.”

“I had a mild suspicion,” Finn teases, and kisses him again.

 

***

 

(Not all beautiful things start that way.

A sun is born when gravity begins pulls matter indiscriminately inwards. It’s clumped together, and each particle exists, identical to every particle around it, devoid of life or movement, there, in that ugly, cold ball of density and pressure. And it starts off slow, but then suddenly something snaps. A particle buzzes to life, and nuclear fission begins, and where there was once cold, there’s now heat. The pressure builds up, and over millions and millions of years, it becomes a star, and it flares and erupts, and it gives live to the solar system around it.

Not all beautiful things start that way.

Sometimes, they take millions of years. Sometimes, they take months that stretch into millenia, and take hard choices and impossible amounts of hope to be forged into something radiant and alive.

 _His name is Finn, the war is over, there are people in the galaxy who he loves, his best friend is Rey, he likes to knit, he has a home, even if it’s more of a feeling than a place, and he’s in love with Poe, in a way that’s bright, and alive, and real, and infinite, and so completely, indescribably beautiful._ )

 

***

 

The end of a war is never a clean affair. It leaves behind a mess, and it leaves behind threads that will never be resolved, and that will bother Finn for the rest of time. He’ll probably never know what happened to that Stormtrooper from the ship, and as much as he wants to, he’ll never be able to track the wellbeing and security of every war orphan, and every refugee, left stranded by the First Order’s destruction. He’s been reading about galactic politics, and trying to understand the complexities of the Republic, and the New Republic, and the current post-war order, and it always leaves him with a headache, and makes him feel like there’s something more he should be doing, even though there isn’t. He’s asked. In fact, he contacts General Organa (or, Leia, he supposes, since she isn’t technically a General anymore) at least once a week, asking if there’s anything he can do. He doesn’t know who else to call, really. He talks to Rey and Rose every day, but it’s different. They talk about politics and the aftermath of the war, that much is unavoidable, but they’re just as much at a loss as he is, and are just as haunted by loose ends and the sudden, crushing realisation that actions no longer have galactic consequences. If it were anyone other than Leia, he thinks they’d probably be annoyed by him, but instead she just sighs and says _no, Finn. What I need you to do is try and find a way to let go_.

Letting go isn’t easy, and sometimes, when he wakes up and forgets where he is, he wonders if he’ll ever recover. But then, without fail, he feels Poe holding him, and whispering _you’re a person_ , _you’re home, I love you_ , and he remembers that he's _here_ , and that he’s got all of time to make steps toward letting go. And when Poe wakes up from a nightmare, Finn reciprocates, and holds him until the shaking passes. He says _I love you_ , and while love isn’t and never will be a cure, it helps. The hardest is when it happens during the day. Sometimes, Poe will get absent, and then start shaking, because he swears he can feel Kylo Ren in his head. Sometimes Finn will smell something that sends him into a panic, until he’s brought back by the feeling of sunlight streaming through their window, or by BB-8 insistently beeping and ramming into his leg, or by Poe grabbing his hand and not letting go. 

But despite all that, Finn is happy.

He wakes up next to Poe one morning, and just lies there for a while watching him sleep. He looks younger, like this, with his curls stark against the white of the bed sheets, and the bare skin of his chest luminescent in the soft sunlight. He reaches out and runs his fingertips over the scar on Poe’s cheek. He still hasn’t asked about it, because he wants to wait for Poe to tell him.

“You can ask if you want,” Poe mutters, voice thick with sleep and eyes still closed.

Finn leans forward and presses a gentle kiss to his forehead, and it never gets old, the feeling of kissing Poe. “Good morning,” Finn whispers.

Poe shuffles and opens his eyes, and smiles up at Finn, and it quickly turns into a smirk. “Were you checking me out?” Poe asks, and then laughs at the look on Finn’s face.

“Shut up,” Finn says, and kisses his lips, and Poe hums and leans into it, reaching up and grabbing the back of Finn’s neck, fingers tracing over the chain that holds the ring, which hasn’t and probably never will leave his neck. “You’re really hot,” Finn continues. “And besides, I wasn’t checking you out.”

“Maybe a bit?” Poe asks, between kisses.

“Maybe a bit,” Finn admits, and lets his head fall onto Poe’s chest.

He holds Poe’s hand, and traces his thumb along a long scar that zig-zags up the side of his thumb. “How’d you get this one?” Finn murmurs.

Poe laughs, and it’s unexpected, because when Finn thinks of scars he doesn’t think of joy. “That one’s actually a funny story.” And he tells him about this time, in the first few weeks of knowing Snap and Jess, involving alcohol, and dares, and alarmingly carnivorous fish. Poe’s smile only falters for a second when he mentions Snap (and Finn knows it hurts, the fact that Poe will never really know what happened to one of his best friends), and then it’s back to wide and nostalgic and genuine.

The story makes Finn laugh, and shake his head in amused disbelief, and then he releases Poe’s hand so he can run his fingers over a scar on his abdomen, a few inches below the dark star left behind by the blaster on Escion VII.

“Where’d you get this one?” he asks.

Poe goes silent, and Finn can tell this isn’t going to be a funny story. “When I got captured on Jakku,” he murmurs. “Got roughed up by Stormtroopers before Kylo Ren had his turn with me. The day I met you.”

(They’ve talked about that day enough that Finn knows it holds a complicated position in Poe’s memory. It was simultaneously the worst day of his life, he told him once, but it was also the beginning of the best thing to ever happen to him, even if he didn’t know it at the time.)

Finn pushes himself back up on his elbows and kisses Poe. “Are you okay?” he asks, and Poe nods.

Finn hesitates, before pressing his fingers to the scar on Poe’s jaw, the long, red one, that’s barely faded in months. “How’d you get this one?” he asks.

Poe sighs. “It was in the first week after leaving Chyria,” he starts, squeezing his eyes shut like the memory hurts (and Finn knows it probably does). “We were pursuing the carrier, and we thought it probably had the kids in it, y’know, the ones taken from Yarrala, so we just wanted to kill the bad guys, and be heroes.” He says it with a tone of bitterness. “I – I got reckless. Dumb. And it worked for a bit. We managed to take out most of the ship’s defences, and were getting ready to send a squad in, and I authorised it.” He shakes his head. “We should have waited. Turns out there wasn’t even anyone onboard, apart from troops, so it wasn’t like it was worth it, either. The squad got into trouble, most of ‘em died, so I flew in close, getting ready to go after them, and was so focused on not fucking up that I didn’t notice a TIE-fighter coming up on my left flank, and before I knew what was happening it shot me down. I crashed. A bit of debris…” he trails of, and presses a hand to the scar. “There was so much blood, buddy,” he takes a deep breath. “I thought I was gonna die, and I remember thinking, fuck, I didn’t get to go out with Finn. Which is a stupid last thought, when I think about it.”

Finn kisses his throat, then his jaw, then his lips. “It’s not stupid,” he reassures him. “And besides, you get to go out with me now.”

They lie together for a while longer, wrapped in each other’s arms, until eventually the heaviness of Poe’s story dissipates, and is washed away by the familiar feelings of contentment and warmth and home.  Finn has his own scars, and when Poe asks him about them, he’ll tell him. They begin before his earliest memories, and they extend far beyond that, into every moment of violence and pain since. But they’re part of who he is, those scars, both the ones he can see and the ones that he can’t, and he wouldn’t change things even if he could, because without the scars he wouldn’t have Rey, he wouldn’t have Rose, he wouldn’t have Poe.

“I love you,” Poe says.

“I love you, too,” Finn responds, and he breathes, and he doesn’t let go, and it’s everything he ever wanted.

The end of a war is never a clean affair. Letting go is hard, but it gets easier with time, and Finn knows, with the same confidence that he knows that he loves Poe, and will love him forever, that eventually he’ll get there.

 

***

 

(The truth is, that not all beautiful things are monumental. The sun rises, and the moon sets, and the stars keep burning, and time keeps ticking forward at it’s languid pace. The truth is, that the universe doesn’t care who lives and who dies and who loves. Each moment of Finn wrapped in Poe’s arms, each gentle kiss and each soft _I love you_ are blips in the grand scheme of things. But, the truth is, it doesn’t matter. Not all beautiful things are monumental, but that doesn’t make them any less breathtaking. The sun rises, and the moon sets, and the stars keep burning, and time keeps ticking forward at it’s languid pace, and Finn keeps loving Poe.)

 

***

_THE END_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who stuck with me through this! I'm always open to compliments, chats and criticism (both constructive and otherwise) so if you want, leave a comment or come visit me on tumblr at [poe-dmrn.tumblr.com](http://poe-dmrn.tumblr.com) and tell me what you liked or disliked about this fic, or if you just want to talk about loving and respecting Finn.


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